


A Few More Rescues

by poetic_nonsense



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Adventure & Romance, Agender Aziraphale (Good Omens), Agender Character, Aziraphale Gets Rescued (a Lot), Aziraphale and Crowley Through The Ages (Good Omens), BAMF Crowley (Good Omens), Canon Compliant, Darksknight come read my fics challenge, Genderfluid Character, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Nonbinary Character, Oblivious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Other, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Pining, ace friendly, are you looking for Stuff Like the Bastille But More????? this fic is for you, but also lots of Ineffable Dorks Being Ridiculous, he can and will be both at once, in the sense of High Adventure but we're mostly talking shenanigans, instead of BEING inspired BY the stories, loser Crowley, nerdy history/literature stuff because I'm a nerd, romance tropes, swooning maiden Aziraphale, the prologue is a prologue because Crowley inspired the story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21695302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetic_nonsense/pseuds/poetic_nonsense
Summary: 5+1 Times Crowley Rescued Aziraphale According to the Romantic Tropes of the Era, and One Time Aziraphale Turned It Around on Him (plus Prologue)Let's be real, the Bastille was definitely not the only time Aziraphale "Swooning Maiden" Ziraphale got Anthony "Just Wants to Get to Be the Hero" Crowley to rescue him.  Here is an utterly self-indulgent selection of further rescues through the ages, complete with 16th-century literary tropes and everyone involved being a complete dork, because I'm writing the fanfiction I want to see in the world.Fic is pre-written, and a chapter will be posted every Friday!
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 553
Kudos: 609





	1. Prologue: 2147 B.C. - The Descent of Inanna

**Author's Note:**

  * For [purewanderlust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/purewanderlust/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Just Another Sword Fight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20143978) by [DemonicGeek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonicGeek/pseuds/DemonicGeek). 



> AAAAAAAAa people I'm so excited for this you have no idea! I've been working on this for four months, it's my first multichapter fic, it's so far up my alley it IS my alley, and I think you folks are gonna like it too.
> 
> This fic was inspired by [DemonicGeek's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonicGeek/pseuds/DemonicGeek) fantastic fic Just Another Sword Fight, which has a similar premise but with more swords (and swords are awesome). It's sweet and funny and has a little surprise in the epilogue that nearly killed me dead of "this is all I have ever wanted", and is generally a super fun read!
> 
> And I as a writer was inspired by [purewanderlust's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/purewanderlust/pseuds/purewanderlust) fic [Too Wise To Woo Peaceably](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20035837), which you should all read immediately if you like Much Ado About Nothing even a little. This fic pretty much single-handedly opened my brain to the realization that I could do _anything I wanted_ with Good Omens, that it's pretty much the perfect sandbox for me to bring literally anything I'm passionate about into, and this fic is the first manifestation of that!!
> 
> And the actual, literal biggest shoutout imaginable to [summerofspock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerofspock/pseuds/summerofspock) for being just the most awesome and patient and supportive beta (all while cranking out all sorts of new content for us, of the "never knew we needed this until now" variety).
> 
> The source material for this chapter is easily the most obscure, but I'll have Nerd Notes in the endnotes for each chapter with some cool stuff about whatever tropes or stories or assorted Stuff I've been drawing from!
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

**2147 B.C.**

“What an interessssssting sssituation you’ve got here, angel.”

Aziraphale jumped as the voice seemed to come from everywhere in the dark, mildewy room he was not, apparently, alone in.

“Crawly?” he ventured cautiously, once his corporation’s chest had stopped seizing up in shock.

A broad, toothy grin and keen turmeric eyes, followed shortly by the rest of Crawly, melted dramatically out of a shadowy corner that Aziraphale was quite sure wasn’t actually that shadowy. “That’s what they’re calling me, for now.”

Aziraphale was still clutching at the region where something had tried to leap out of his chest. “Don’t scare me like that, you fiend!”

Crawly’s expression turned into one of mocking concern, with the corners of their mouth still turned up, and they sprawled dramatically sideways onto a stool that Aziraphale was certain hadn’t been there before. “I’d recommend a better inn, personally. There could be _anything_ in all these dark corners. How’d you end up in here, anyway? Nice little angel like you, I wouldn’t have thought ‘festering underground prison cell’ would’ve been your scene.”

Aziraphale sighed, and turned his gaze down to glare mournfully at the prickly rope looped rather excessively around his wrists. The flickering light of the one guttering candle made it look even crueler, like a nest of thorns and shadow. “A very silly sort of mix-up that I haven’t yet had any luck un-mixing, as it were. I seem to have been falsely implicated in a murder.”

“ _Really_ ,” said Crawly’s voice, which sounded more delighted than surprised.

“Yes, the gentleman who handed me the sickle was quite enthusiastic in speaking to the patrolmen.”

“Well, then it seems like a pretty cut-and-dried affair. You’ve got a perpetrator and a legal system _raring_ to bring him to justice, if they just knew who they were really after. Why are you still in here?”

“Oh, the humans of this city have turned too far down the paths of sin and corruption, apparently,” Aziraphale sighed. “Some kind of ultimatum has been issued, I believe. At any rate, a memo’s been circulated which expressed quite emphatically that under no circumstances are any miracles to be performed in the city until further notification.”

Crawly made a sympathetic noise. “Sudden policy changes from Head Office getting underfoot, are they? I had the same happen back when someone deep down decided domesticating cats wasn’t evil enough to work on, anymore. A hundred and thirty-eight years, I worked on that!”

“Sounds terribly frustrating,” said Aziraphale politely. He was starting to find the whole interaction a bit odd.

“Anyway,” said Crawly, perhaps starting to think the same themself. They shifted a bit, as though the stool wasn’t entirely comfortable, and crossed their legs. “Already in here when the news came, were you?”

Aziraphale hedged. “Not… as such.”

_Now_ Crawly looked properly surprised. “ _Not as such?_ Well, how’d you get here, then?”

Aziraphale shifted, because the rushes matting the floor _weren’t_ comfortable, which he felt was very understandable given he hadn’t manifested them himself.

Crawly raised their eyebrows, waiting.

“...there’s a particular kind of spiced date that originated here, and all the merchants in the villages stopped selling them once word about the unrighteousness got about.”

Crawly’s voice went oddly strangled, like a strange mix of humor and pleading. Their face had contorted into a wide-eyed expression that Aziraphale had no hope of interpreting. “ _Datessss?!_ ”

“Yes, well, what about you? Why are _you_ here?” Aziraphale snapped. He was sure there was _some_ reason human bodies had been designed so that so much blood could rush to the face at once, though he hadn’t yet figured it out. Nevertheless, it was remarkably uncomfortable.

Crawly grinned again, regaining some of their decadent sprawl. Their ankles peeped out of the blackness of their robes in an inexplicably indecent manner. Aziraphale had to look away.

“Oh, you know. Heard about this little town, good cheese, lots of wickedness and immorality, had to come check it out. Imagine strolling in and hearing about this odd white-haired chap who got himself arrested two days after arriving.”

“Ah. You’ve come here to gloat, then,” Aziraphale nodded to himself. This was business. That would make all this more comprehensible. He felt oddly disappointed at the thought, though, and couldn’t figure out why.

“Not necessarily,” said Crawly, pulling Aziraphale out of his thoughts. At Aziraphale’s questioning look, they added, “We’re old acquaintances, aren’t we? Get to check up on each other from time to time.”

“Old enemies,” Aziraphale corrected, despite the little rush of warmth blooming in his chest. (Chests were rather finicky things, he was finding.) Things on Earth did get awfully lonely from time to time. Especially when one was stuck in a subterranean cell.

“Old whatever.”

They both sat in silence for a minute or two, comfortably contemplating this happy little development. Then Crawly asked, “Have you got any ideas about getting out, then? Anything like a plan for how you’re going to get out of here?”

“Oh! No, not as such,” Aziraphale replied, and started worrying at his hands again. He didn’t suppose he was going to be let go without some sort of miraculous intervention. The guards he had so far encountered didn’t seem particularly inclined to listen to explanations, and sadly the city’s wickedness didn’t seem far enough gone to punish murder with a slap on the wrist.

He could feel the weight of Crawly’s eyes regarding him. “Being stuck underground really doesn’t suit you, angel,” they said finally.

Aziraphale looked up at them, but before he could figure out some kind of response Crawly’s demeanor changed, eyebrows drawing down as they leaned forward, inspecting him. “No, it’s more than that. Something’s off…”

Those yellow eyes raked all over Aziraphale, and it set off a very strange sensation in his stomach.

“...Your ring! That’s what it is!” Crawly sounded genuinely surprised. “Every time I’ve seen you, you’ve had that ring, even back… Why’d they take your ring?”

Aziraphale couldn’t help a heavy sigh. “I suspect they might have sold it.”

Crawly hissed. “I’m _sssure_ they haven’t.”

Aziraphale blinked, confused, but before he could think of anything to say Crawly was twisting round on the stool, sniffing in the direction of the door with a hard expression.

“Those men coming down the hall certainly don’t bear you any good will, angel. Any last-minute revelations?”

Aziraphale took a fortifying breath. “Erm. No,” he admitted.

Crawly’s smile had a sort of sharp-edged relish to it. “Looks like a little demonic interference wouldn’t go amiss, then, would it?”

Aziraphale’s chest briefly malfunctioned again under the magnitude of the implication, and Crowley waited with a patiently expectant expression while he located his words.

“I suppose I — I couldn’t _really_ do anything about it if you decided to — well...”

“Good. That’s settled.” Crawly settled back in the chair with a satisfied sort of wiggle and changed the subject completely. “Have you tried this ‘gender’ thing they’ve come up with, by the way? It’s brilliant! Trust humans to take something as simple as minor biological variation _completely_ the wrong way, and then make something so fantastically absurd out of it. Honestly, it’s like alcohol all over again.”

Aziraphale was still worried about his impending fate, and also had rather less interest in gender than Crowley seemed to. He hummed noncommittally, trying to disguise his lack of enthusiasm for politeness' sake, just before the door started making the sort of noises that usually immediately preceded bursting open.

The door burst open.

Four men strode in, three of them wearing entirely too much weaponry for Aziraphale’s liking. Aziraphale scrambled to his feet as best he could.

The city’s judge wore a blue robe, and ate too much pickled anchovy, judging by his breath.

“You!” he barked. “The stranger with no name. Your judgment is upon you.”

Crawly made a face like they were fighting a smirk. “No name?” they asked, smirking at Aziraphale with their eyebrows.

“Yes, well, being as I’m not technically supposed to be here —” he hissed, pointedly brushing off his robe, before he was cut off by the loud exclamation of one of the guards, who all seemed to have just noticed Crawly was there.

“Who are you, then?” demanded the loud guard, hand falling threateningly on his sword.

“I’m _ssssssso_ _glad_ you asssssked.” Crawly turned and rose, and by the time they were on their feet they had pulled their demonic presence around them like a cloak, staring down the humans from the center of a spot that suddenly seemed to be drawing in and devouring all the light in the room.

One of the guards toppled backward in terror, landing on his arm and biting off a cry when it made a quiet _crunch_.

Aziraphale thought this was quite understandable. He himself was having a hard time moving the air that had got caught in his throat.

Every inch of Crawly radiated infernal charisma. Their eyes burned like sulfur, their expression mingled wrath and effortless command, and their movements were unearthly and strange. Their hair glowed like a halo of fire. They seemed to _shine_ with darkness.

They loomed impossibly before the humans, and when they spoke it was with a deep and resounding sibilance that stole the movement from the already pale faces.

“ _I am the serpent who brought misery and wonder to the world. I am the terror of rich men. I am the trembling of kings in their beds and the oath of the liar. I am the pricks of whispering starlight which lead men out into the night."_

Crawly drew back their power a bit, though the enormity of their presence still kept Aziraphale’s throat from working properly.

“But mossssst importantly, I am the friend of this man you have falsely arrested.”

“We — we’re dispensing justice,” stammered the judge, who seemed to be the first to recover the capacity of speech.

Crawly snorted derisively, and Aziraphale couldn’t help staring at the working of their throat. “You’re putting on a pantomime.”

“H-he’s a murderer!”

Crawly snarled. “He’s a _scapegoat_. The murderer’s walking the streets, probably because of the bag of coin he slipped your patrolmen.”

The terrified human fell silent.

“Now,” said Crawly. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. You are going to escort my friend here up to your office, where you will give him his ring and two bottles from your cellar.”

Crawly paused to indolently regard the humans’ frantic nodding. Aziraphale couldn’t look away from the imperious tilt of their head; they looked down at the men with the air of absolute authority, Aziraphale thought distantly, of a king standing before a group of errant lords. The lines of their body were loose but not relaxed, and they still shone from within with tenebrous power. Aziraphale could see so clearly in them the serpent they were at Eden, coiled and ready to strike in less than a moment, and, oh, it was dazzling.

“Then you’ll let him go, with a pass ensuring him immunity from any more of your men’s _‘peace-keeping’_.”

Crowley glanced over to Aziraphale, who found it within himself to smile weakly back at them.

“What do you think, angel?”

Four sets of terrified eyes turned to Aziraphale, who hardly noticed.

“Oh — oh, it’s — that sounds very nice, of course. Although — I did also have some writing tablets...?” he ventured.

Crawly grinned broadly at him. “You’ll return those, too, of course,” they added, before they turned back to the men, and their smile sharpened into something tempered with menace. 

“Then _you_ —” with a pointed look at the guards “— are going to come with us while my friend leads you to the _real_ culprit, whom you will arrest so that your ‘justice’ system can perform some actual justice. Does that seem _reassssssssonable?_ ”

The humans hastened to supply scattered assents.

Crawly smiled. “ _Exssssssscellent._ ”

In an instant, the magnetic potence was gone, and Crawly looked deceptively human again. (If anything, the men looked even more awestruck. Aziraphale thought that was understandable, too.)

Aziraphale suspected something may be wrong with his corporation; his chest had gone all tight and funny again, and it gave an extra pang of something when Crawly turned to him with a satisfied look and gestured toward the doorway.

“After you.”

He managed another smile, and started hesitantly toward the door, while the guards ducked out of the way with scrupulous politeness — until he caught sight of the one still sweating and writhing fitfully in the corner, curled around his arm.

“Oh, Crawly —” he turned back to them (the rope around his wrists had fallen away at some point, when had that happened?) and found them closer than expected, looking at him with a surprised sort of attentiveness.

“I — well, I don’t suppose —” he said, nodding shortly in the direction of the man. “I suppose it would be very wily to perform what looked like a divine miracle in a city where there weren’t supposed to be any…?”

“I — you — ff —” Crawly looked incredulously between him and the guard for a moment, before making a strangled noise and striding over to crouch down near the man, who didn’t look much happier about it than they did.

“I’m going to have to cause _so_ much trouble to smooth this over Downstairs,” they grumbled, giving the arm in question a sharp rap and watching in dramatic resignation as the bones visibly snapped back into place.

“Stay out of Uruk for the next few weeks,” they muttered to the stupefied man, who nodded silently, looking more dazed than entirely conscious, before lifting themself up to give Aziraphale an expectant look.

“Thank you,” said Aziraphale, feeling a little dazed himself, though, again, that could probably be blamed on the fact that all the blood in his corporation had tried to rush to his cheeks at once.

Crawly smiled, seemingly despite themself. “Let’s go get you those dates, then, angel,” they said, nudging toward the door again. “Oi! You oafs! Let’s get this over with, yeah?”

Aziraphale returned the smile helplessly, and kindled the little tongue of warmth flickering within his breast.

——————————————————————————————

**638 B.C.** ****

“Humans really are the most marvelous creatures, aren’t they?” Crawly crowed by way of greeting, dropping into the seat across from Aziraphale with a tremendous grin and very little warning.

“Crawly!” Aziraphale hissed, lowering his hands, which had been hovering over an unconscious man sick with some sort of pestilence that had been sweeping the area. Aziraphale wasn’t sure why pestilences had been invented if he was just going to be sent around to cure all of them, but it must be part of the Plan, which was, of course, unknowable. All Aziraphale knew was that he kept getting sent to drive them out of places and it was all getting a bit irritating. “I’m trying to work!”

Crawly gave the man on the bed a sympathetic grimace that didn’t actually seem all that sincere. “Obviously. We’re always working. Both our Headquarters seem to think we’re fine being worked to the bone. And there just keep being more humans, which, honestly, I just don’t see how this is meant to go on, if they just keep heaping everything on us.”

Aziraphale made a carefully noncommittal noise. It wasn’t that he wasn’t glad to see Crawly for the first time in about three hundred years, but Crawly had a tendency to say things that made him nervous. He squared his shoulders and raised his hands to try again, and Crawly went back to grinning. He was in a good mood, then.

“What’re you working on?” Crawly asked casually, as soon as Aziraphale had started to concentrate.

Aziraphale dropped his hands again and sighed, shooting Crawly an irritated glance as he tried to parse out whether it was safe to tell him. Crawly didn’t look particularly chastened.

“I’m supposed to heal the town of a sickness that’s passing through. You wouldn’t know anything about it?”

“Nah, not my style,” Crawly said flippantly. “Why’re you working on them one at a time? Thought angels were supposed to be good with the healing?” he continued, before Aziraphale had a chance to ask what a style was.

“I _could_ heal them all at once, technically,” Aziraphale admitted grudgingly, “but with this many people it leaves you with the most abominable headache. More pleasant to go through one by one. Even if it is horrendously boring.”

“Ah, neat. Anyway! You should come away to Assyria for a bit. There’s this chap Ashurbanipal who’s trying to collect all of human knowledge in one place. Imagine!”

“They’ve done that before, Crawly. They’re called _libraries_. Mostly ‘all of human knowledge’ turns out to be tax records and lists of war trophies. Hardly worth going all that way for.”

“No, no, Aziraphale, this one’s different. This one’s collecting _stories_ as well. And science and things. All the fruits of humans poking their little heads about, trying to figure out what goes on and why, all in one place!”

Aziraphale paused. “Are they really?”

“All those questions, angel, all that _where does it go_ and _how does it work_ and _why doesn’t it do this instead_ — do you know, they’ve started wondering what the world is made of? I’m not sure She’s designed the universe in great enough detail for them.” He smiled with all his teeth.

Aziraphale sniffed and turned away.

Apparently, however, Crawly’s excellent mood was not to be derailed that easily.

“Oh, come on, angel,” he cajoled in a low and wily voice, “think of the _sssstories._ Fantastic things. All that divinely gifted imagination, thousands of lifetimes of it — and blessed if they haven’t started _reinventing_ them! One person thinks up something good — or sees it, _must_ have done, must have been one of the guards — anyway! One person thinks up something good, and suddenly everyone’s cottoned on, tweaking and exaggerating and resetting the thing, making it all bigger. The most fantastic sense of drama, humans. Honestly, both our sides are dust in the wind compared with the way they can develop an idea.”

“Humans are rather good at coming up with things,” Aziraphale agreed mildly.

And that had been that, or so Aziraphale had thought — until he had finished with the sick townspeople and they had ended up in the nearest tavern with a rapidly emptying jug of barley ale between them, and Crawly said, out of the blue:

“The hero’s a very human thing, innit?”

Aziraphale’s nose wrinkled. “I suppose?”

But Crawly had apparently already made up his mind, and was rapidly getting into a roll. “No, but — just — listen. A hero’s an opposite to evil, right, without being divine, either. Does things as opposed to being things. All these valiant quests, daring rescues, valorous deeds, fueled by passion, loyalty, love, rather than _holiness_ or the _will of God_. Like — right. Not once, in an extra-temporal eternity, could either of our sides come up with the idea of _adventure_ , could they?”

“Probably not,” Aziraphale ceded.

“Exactly! And there’s a sort of excitement to the idea, it’s _exciting_ , isn’t it? You don’t _get_ that in — in the ‘forces of God versus forces of Hell,’ do you? Dreadful stuff, from a storytelling view. Not too wild about it the rest of the time, mind, but that’s work for you. But _heroes_ , right, that’s different. There’s a — a _romance_ to it.”

“ _Romance_ ,” Aziraphale repeated dubiously, thoroughly lost.

Crawly seemed too wrapped up to pay him any heed. “Hero goes somewhere dangerous, does something… y’know, hero-ey — saves the being in distress, sets things right, gets something nice for their trouble, end of the day, everyone goes home happy. There’s something — _wonderful_ , about that, don’t you think?”

He was looking at Aziraphale earnestly, now, or about as earnestly as one could when one was leaning about thirty degrees to the side.

Aziraphale was still lost, but something inside him felt as though it understood something very important. “Yes,” he said, looking into the deep saffron color of Crawly’s unblinking eyes. “Yes, I imagine I might.”

“Yeah,” said Crawly, sounding very drunk indeed. “Me too.”

Aziraphale looked down at his cup. “We should probably sober up soon.”

Crawly made a horrible face and slouched down in his seat so he could put his dirty feet on the table. “One more hour.”

Aziraphale nodded, reluctant to give up the enjoyably tingly feeling he suddenly had. “That seems reasonable.”

“Cheers,” Crawly grunted, and knocked back his glass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Nerd Notes**  
> 
> 
> The Library of Ashurbanipal (which I cannot seem to stop referencing in my fics for some reason -- it’s because I’m a nerd) was like a proto-Library of Alexandria in some ways! Pretty well-renowned, possessing at least 30,000 writing tablets, until it burned down. I blame Hastur. And it’s also where one of the only surviving renditions of the Descent of Inanna was found!
> 
> The Descent of Inanna is a super interesting Mesopotamian myth with a few different variations, because humans are cool like that. The basic gist is: heavenly being is imprisoned, gets rescued by a super attractive and wily nonbinary/intersex being created specifically to save her.
> 
> If you want a few more details:
> 
> Inanna (also known as Ishtar, one of the most well-known Mesopotamian deities, goddess of love, fertility, justice, and war -- sometimes also called the “Queen of Heaven”) gets stuck in the Underworld, having got herself down there for a variety of reasons sometimes amounting to little more than “eh, why not.” Whatever her plan was, she’s in over her head and needs rescuing, because at the gates of the Underworld she’s been symbolically stripped of her power and agency in the form of her jewelry (and clothes), and she’s now a prisoner.
> 
> In order to set things right again, the god of wisdom creates a nonbinary/intersex being called Asushunamir to go rescue her. (It’s worth noting that Asushunamir is described as “having the nature of both male and female”, being some variation of shining/clothed in stars/made of light, and also -- and this is universally presented as really, really important -- _absolutely_ gorgeous. One of the translations I found translates “Asushunamir” as “Good-looks the playboy” and I love it.)
> 
> Asushunamir goes on down to hell and succeeds in rescuing Inanna without so much as breaking a sweat -- depending on the variation, it’s usually either by invoking the names of power/the gods, OR because the Queen of the Underworld is IMMEDIATELY SUPER THIRSTY for them and, after a little bit of wiling, hands the only thing that can save Inanna right on over. Which is not the road I took here, but believe me, I was tempted.
> 
> (The rest of this isn’t super relevant but it’s awesome so hear me out.)
> 
> So Inanna and Asushunamir book it on out of there, but not before the Queen of the Underworld has a chance to curse Asushunamir and all their kind to be social outcasts. When Inanna learns of this, though, she blesses them and all their kind with the gifts of healing, wisdom, and prophecy, and vows that they will forever be her favored people.
> 
> So, if you’re nonbinary and/or intersex, what’s up, I have 4000-year-old evidence to suggest you’re 1. awesome, 2. good-looking as hECK, and 3. beloved by objectively one of the coolest goddesses.
> 
> (Oh, and also one of Inanna’s other names is Ashtoreth. Which doesn’t line up with the parallels I’m building here, and I imagine Nanny Ashtoreth was a result of the early Christians going around and reinterpreting everyone else’s gods as demons, and Ashtoreth was the name of Inanna’s they went with. BUT I think it makes a good spin that Crowley might have been thinking back to this when he named his unnecessarily sexy Nannysona. A word which I apologize for inflicting on your eyes. But not enough to delete it.)
> 
> **Next up: High Medieval courtly love (featuring dragon)!**


	2. 1187 A.D. - Chivalric Romance

**1187 A.D.**

Aziraphale sighed, tipped his head back against the bark, and wondered how long he would have to wait.

The demon eyed him warily, as though he wasn’t sure Aziraphale would stay put.

Under normal circumstances, he certainly _wouldn’t_ stay put, of course. The rope wrapped around his middle had an infernal charge to it, but only a weak one — barely enough to prickle, really, through his armor — and he could neutralize it at any point with a few silent blessings and then miracle away the rope. He’d have to do some quick teleportation or perhaps fight his captor, but it was feasible. Even considering the only demon he'd ever seen up to now was Crowley, he was fairly certain he could smite this one.

But. Well.

The demon had been muttering something about Crowley when Aziraphale came to, and, oh, it _had_ been rather a while since he’d seen Crowley last, and it seemed like a shame to waste such an opportunity. It did sting a bit to have been caught unawares by one of The Enemy (well, one who wasn’t Crowley; he was — he was _used_ to Crowley), but the sheer good fortune of finding that his attacker was here for some sort of meeting with Crowley did smooth things over better than he would care to admit.

It must have been down to chance that the demon had stumbled across him in the meantime.

The waiting, however, was proving a bit of a trial. Aziraphale would rather not be tied to a tree trunk under _any_ circumstances, but after spending three hours sitting against a particularly scratchy bur oak, on a damp and overcast day, with a demonic artifact slowly wearing away at him and a demon in the form of a large and two-headed dragon staring at him rather unnervingly, he was beginning to consider the relative merits of a good many things.

(Additionally, there was no amount of miracling that could completely banish the sensation of cold, soggy leaves slowly seeping their way through one’s underwear.)

Aziraphale forced a quick, strained smile at the agent of Evil and closed his eyes, trying to think of mulled wine and fireplaces and other nice things to see him through the ordeal.

In a minute or two, there were the distant sounds of foliage being interfered with, and Aziraphale opened his eyes to see the dragon peering nervously with one of its heads down through the trees.

Aziraphale turned to look as well, and the muffled sounds were soon followed by the appearance of a dark figure atop an almost-equally-dark charger.

Aziraphale forgot to blink for a little while.

The knight was clad completely in black armor, with a flash of color at his chest from the multicolored ribbon he wore, and his mount was a sinewy, night-colored stallion with a surreptitious flash of white streaking down its forehead.

Both horse and rider were so magnificent that Aziraphale barely noticed how supremely uneasy with each other they seemed, each moving in a sinuous rhythm that clashed against the other’s at every possible juncture.

Aziraphale was completely taken with the dashing figure the black knight cut even before he struggled to rein in his mount a few yards off, pulled up his visor, and revealed Crowley’s achingly familiar visage.

Crowley was staring hard at the dragon, but for a moment broke off to sweep his gaze quickly over Aziraphale, assessing. His face gave away nothing, but he let his gaze linger long enough for Aziraphale to give him a small smile to let him know he was all right.

“I’ll thank you to unhand my adversary, Valac.” Crowley uttered the words with an absolute coldness Aziraphale had never heard from him before, turning his gaze back to the demon.

Valac hissed, with palpable irritation. “You’re late.”

“This is the twelfth century, Valac, there’s no postal service anymore. It’s sheer bloody luck that page found me at all.”

Valac made a contemptuous sound.

"We have business to discuss."

"Yes," said Crowley, sounding very serious. "I expect we do."

Oh, good. Aziraphale wiggled a bit. All according to plan, then. Crowley could finish up his business with this Valac character, and then Aziraphale would let himself out and they’d go and get some supper together.

"I take it this isn't official. Even Hastur's got more professionalism than this, and last time I checked you were on hellhound cleanup."

Valac seethed and gnashed his teeth and looked generally as though he were having a difficult time keeping control of himself.

"You don't want official," he growled menacingly.

Crowley didn’t look impressed.

"So, what's this about? Secret Satan? Office raffle? Birthday fund committee?"

Crowley's horse skittered impatiently, and he nearly toppled off, pitching sideways for one perilous moment before he managed to rein it in. He still looked impossibly gallant.

"It's about the Angel."

Aziraphale blinked.

Ah.

That was less according to plan.

Perhaps he needn’t have been quite so surprised, but he had rather assumed — this was only his first demonic kidnapping, but it seemed like the way these things would go, didn’t it? Demons and Angels, natural enemies, notice one while you’re out on a bit of a ramble and think, “oh, why not treat myself, just capture that for a quick bit of interrogation" — or whatever demons were fond of doing?

He hadn’t imagined anything would actually be, well, _about_ him.

“Figured,” Crowley replied, darkly, before Aziraphale could think on it further. “How’d you even find him, anyway?”

Valac looked smug. “My Office is the finding of —”

“Oh, yeah, your ‘finding treasures’ thing,” Crowley interrupted, sounding more like his usual insouciant self. “Not necessarily _who_ those treasures are _for_ , though, eh? Weren’t you the one who discovered that Augustine bloke in Hippo, all those years back? ‘Massive asset for our side,’ you said. ‘Easily tempted, loads of debauchery, lead others astray.’ You know the Christians are keener on his work now than ever? One of the four Doctors of the Church, they’re calling him. Required reading in all the monasteries.”

Valac roared, and the boughs of the trees quivered.

 _Treasures,_ Aziraphale thought faintly, and flushed in — in righteous irritation. Talking about him as if he were a chest of jewels, or an illuminated Book of Hours! The very cheek!

The subsequent implication that he belonged to Crowley was, of course, similarly ridiculous.

“I know whose this one is! You've got everyone else fooled, Downstairs! But I’m wise to what you’ve been _doing_ with it!”

Aziraphale froze.

Panic rose in his chest, and he turned his head to Crowley, thinking — well, Crowley would have an idea — surely they could make some sort of, of diversion, or — or maybe he could — oh, him and his foolish, _selfish_ desire to see Crowley again —

— but Crowley was still gazing impassively at Valac, looking utterly unbothered, if more than passingly disdainful.

“ _What_ have I been _‘doing with him,’_ then, you great pillock?”

Oh. Oh, that was right — they hadn't been doing anything at all, really, had they? Only running into each other every now and then, and mostly by coincidence, at that. It wasn't as though they — as though Crowley was — as though they _actually_ —

But still… it would be enough to condemn them, wouldn’t it?

Valac's snarl produced two very nasty-looking spurts of blue-grayish flame from both of his snouts.

“You’ve been _keeping it around_ , sending _false reports_ to Hell, building all this up as some great, ongoing battle you’ve been fighting for this entire time, when you’ve been doing nothing of the kind!”

Aziraphale was shaking with very real fear, now, and he folded his hands tightly in his lap so no-one could see, but Crowley still looked more interested in staying on his horse than anything Valac might be saying — to Valac’s visible irritation.

“And why, exactly, would I be doing that?” Crowley drawled.

Valac roared in rage. “To steal yourself a promotion when you finally kill it, of course!”

Aziraphale stilled.

Well. That certainly wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

His distress melted away in the face of his overwhelming relief at the sheer absurdity of it, like snow in the sweep of the spring floods.

Crowley sounded like he was trying to stifle a laugh. “ _What?_ ”

“Why else would you keep it around so long?” Valac snapped. “Anyone else would have just killed it and got on with things, but you were always a devious one. You were always thinking of ways to get yourself ahead.”

“I think you’re seriously underestimating the Angel,” Crowley said, sounding amused.

Valac hissed scornfully. “Don’t insult me by expecting me to believe this ridiculous farce! If it were powerful enough to evade _you_ for five thousand years, how could it have been captured so easily?”

“So why are _you_ keeping him alive, then?” Crowley asked offhandedly.

Valac only grinned, very wide, with both his mouths.

“ _Oh_ ,” Crowley sighed, managing to convey an impression of great disappointment with the realization. “You want me to tell you my master plan so you can use it yourself. Things getting that bad Downstairs, are they?”

“Better enjoy your mouthing off while you still can, Crowley,” Valac growled. “Won’t be able to once I scorch the head from your shoulders.”

“And how are you going to make me tell — oh, of course, you’re going to kill him if I don’t go along with it.”

The dragon’s tail curled in on itself in a very smug manner.

Aziraphale squirmed uncomfortably. This was really going a bit further than he’d anticipated, maybe he should end this charade and, and reveal himself, as it were — oh, but Crowley looked so _gallant_ , and he didn’t seem particularly worried about this Valac, after all, and, well, it was all so very like the stories, wasn’t it? Aziraphale had had so much work to do for the past eight hundred years — would it be so very bad to indulge just this once?

“I’ll have to fight you for him, then? Your corporation against mine? Whoever loses is going to have a hard time explaining if they try to apply for another one.”

Valac’s heads looked at each other and then back at Crowley. “It’s no concern of mine if you’re not going to _try_ to win,” he gloated.

Crowley only grinned, very wide, and a thrill shocked down Aziraphale’s spine.

He flicked his visor down, miracled up a lance, and turned his mount away to build up some distance to charge.

Aziraphale watched with his heart in his mouth as Crowley stopped his horse with some difficulty about a hundred feet away and turned toward them again. Valac lumbered to his feet and settled in, thin curls of smoke leaking from both his jaws.

There was a single moment of stillness.

Then Crowley was off, dashing down the distance with improbable speed. Aziraphale could hardly watch, couldn’t look away, as Crowley directed his charger straight into the dual maws of the waiting dragon — maws that were opening, unnaturally wide, and from which burst a torrent of infernal flame, hot enough to make Aziraphale gasp and wince away from its barren heat. Even from a dozen feet away, it stung at his face, but he kept his eyes fixed on Crowley, who was still leaning determinedly into its path, swaying perilously with the effort of keeping his lance level.

Aziraphale waited, for a smattering of seconds that felt like an eternity, for the trick, the ace Crowley must have up his sleeve — he _must_ , surely he wasn’t going to just _plunge his corporation into a wall of hellfire_ — but he was waiting a worryingly long time to do it, whatever it was — wasn’t he? — 

— and then his horse decided for him, pulling sharply to the side and nearly sending Crowley off completely as it dashed past the dragon, past Aziraphale, carrying Crowley, with much clanking and flailing and muffled cursing, out of the path of fiery destruction.

Aziraphale managed a laborous exhale, feeling as though the lifespan he didn’t have had just shortened by thirty years.

Crowley did not fall out of the saddle, though it looked like a near thing, and eventually managed to rein in his less-than-well-pleased steed, all the while cursing a blue streak so loud Aziraphale could hear it even from his distance.

Valac made a laggard turn to face Crowley again, leaving a swath of forest smoldering wetly behind him, saved from the infernal blaze only by virtue of its continual dampness. “Ducking and hiding won’t get you anywhere,” he taunted. “Give up and I’ll make it quick.”

“Fuck on off, Valac,” Crowley shouted back, his frustrated, scathing tone undercut by the muffled distortion his helmet gave it.

Valac snorted in what seemed like perhaps the closest he got to amusement, licks of flame singeing the ground beneath him, and watched Crowley with vicious smugness.

Aziraphale turned his eyes to Crowley, too, and watched him squabble with his mount over whether they were, in fact, going to turn back around toward Valac. Eventually Crowley prevailed, and the charger turned back around, looking none too trustful about the situation. 

Aziraphale had a moment to be well and truly anxious — Crowley was about to fling himself at a _dragon_ which could easily reduce his corporation to ash and then he would be stuck in Hell and Aziraphale might not see him again for _thousands_ of years and maybe Aziraphale should intervene after all, maybe it wasn’t too late — 

— but then _something_ changed.

Something in the air.

Aziraphale barely noticed how the patchy brambles alongside the rudimentary forest path pushed up their shoots with more determination, how Crowley’s horse stopped skittering insubordinately and now stood still and poised; his eyes were trained on Crowley’s narrow helmet, from behind which Crowley’s steady stare at Valac was palpable. It was charged with something, something solid and set, and Aziraphale’s breath stopped in his chest as he tried to figure out what — 

And then Crowley was charging again.

Horse and rider barrelled down the distance once again, and Valac breathed forth another awful tumult of hellfire, this one somehow more terrible than the last. Aziraphale’s heartbeat petered off as he watched Crowley drive toward the dragon with his lance, with the sharp forward tilt of his body, braced in preparation for the blow, with the primal and single-minded roar that rose above the clattering of armor and hoofbeats and the din of the flame.

It was far too long. It was over before it happened.

Crowley and his charger plunged into the fire.

Neither of them burned.

Valac looked shocked, then he looked angry, then desperate — the fire burned brighter, bigger, hotter; Crowley didn’t so much as waver — and then Valac looked quite dead, because Crowley’s lance was sticking out of his chest like a great black thorn, and it was over.

Crowley slowed his horse to a halt, and brought it back around to inspect the gigantic, two-headed body, evidently checking to make sure Valac wasn’t in it anymore.

Aziraphale took the moment to take a few deep breaths, encourage his heart to stop beating _quite_ so hard, direct some of the blood back out of his cheeks, and generally compose himself.

He had had reasonable success by the time Crowley swung himself down from the impatient horse and pulled off his helmet, only a little bit wobbly.

“You all right, angel?” Crowley asked, sauntering up with only a bit of clanking. He snapped his fingers, and Aziraphale’s ropes fell away and smoldered into little segments.

“Perfectly all right, thank you,” Aziraphale replied, and accepted the hand Crowley offered to help him up. “I do hope I haven’t caused you any trouble, though. That Valac demon seemed to have quite a lot of —”

“Don’t worry about it, Aziraphale. No one’s going to pay him any mind. He’s always been paranoid. Or, he would be, if he had any imagination at all. People stopped listening to his stories ages ago. And he’s desperate, which is why he came after you in the first place. Very bad form, to interfere with someone else’s adversary. People get tetchy. It’s not going to happen again.”

That last was said so fervently that Aziraphale looked up from brushing off his clothes to find Crowley looking at him with a grimly earnest expression of determination. 

His hands froze, quite inadvertently, and he cast about desperately for something to say while he waited for his heart to start working properly again.

“Well,” he managed, with a small, warm smile, “I should hope so. It was rather inconvenient.”

That must have been the wrong thing to say, because suddenly Crowley was frowning and looking anywhere but at Aziraphale.

“Right,” Crowley said, in a distracted sort of tone. Then he sharpened up. “What were you doing, anyway, hanging around? Valac doesn’t have nearly enough juice to actually incapacitate you, why’d you let him think he could?”

Aziraphale cleared his throat and adjusted his breastplate officiously. “I was gathering intelligence, if you must know,” he replied primly.

He glanced at Crowley — who was peering at him with suspicious disbelief — and added, compulsively, “Very valuable, Upstairs, of course, to get actionable intelligence on what the other side is up to.”

Crowley was grinning, now, a small, honest sort of grin with the corners twitching downward as though they were ready to hide it. Aziraphale tried not to look him in the eye.

“Right,” Crowley repeated, and whatever was troubling him earlier seemed to have been swept away by his suddenly very good mood. “Of course, yeah. Intelligence. Valuable, that. Well. Fancy a ride back to town?”

He gestured grandly back to his steed, which was looking much calmer now that Crowley wasn't on it, and looking rather unfazed by the whole ordeal. (In fact, it was eyeing a nearby clump of nettles with a distinctly covetous gaze.)

Oh. Well. That would be a bit much, after all this, wouldn’t it? A ride would mean a long, pleasant supper, and that was what Aziraphale had been after in the first place, but — after all that excitement, it hardly seemed wise.

“Oh, that’s quite all right, thank you,” said Aziraphale, tamping down a faint tinge of regret. “I think I have to pop on over to Auvergne for a few things, anyway. But — oh! He’s burned off your ribbon!”

Crowley looked down to the ribbonless spot his chest, at which Aziraphale was frowning, and shrugged. “‘S not a big deal, don’t worry yourself over it.”

“Nonsense,” Aziraphale tutted, wringing his hands for a moment before he came to a decision. “Ribbons are the height of fashion, you can’t very well go around without one. Here —”

He performed a very minor miracle and pulled a new ribbon out of the air. It was a pale blue — he couldn’t help himself — but he did give it a very smart serpent motif, undulating down the center in golden embroidery.

He wavered for a moment before reaching out to secure it to Crowley’s chest, but Crowley stood still and silently let him thread it through the loop of his pauldron. Aziraphale stepped back once he’d finished and smiled at it, feeling very pleased with himself and perhaps a bit warm.

“There! Much more dapper.”

He tried very hard not to think about those courtly romances now, about valiant knights and admiring ladies giving favors. It was just a ribbon, really. He was just doing a kindness for — for an old acquaintance.

Crowley still hadn’t said anything, so Aziraphale looked up, to find him going a bit pink and staring down at the ribbon with his mouth open and working.

He worried for a moment that he might have crossed a line, but then Crowley was back to normal, making a few aborted movements before turning back to his horse and swinging cautiously back up into the saddle.

“Right, then. That’s everything taken care of here, isn’t it? Sure I can’t tempt you into a leg of mutton with chestnut sauce?”

That did sound toothsome, but Aziraphale made himself shake his head. “Another time, perhaps?”

Crowley grinned. “As you like. Have fun in Auvergne, then. I expect you’ll be able to find me if you need me. Don’t be a stranger!”

And he was off, with a loud whinny and a canter that was hardly practical but that, Aziraphale thought, made for a very dashing and dramatic exit (even if he thought Crowley’s face might have looked a bit terrified in the moment before it was no longer visible).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tfw you accidentally write a parallel for Crowley's drive through the flaming M25 (and decide to pretend it was intentional)
> 
> Maybe this is my old Catholic feels coming through, but my headcanon is the middle ages/Christian Europe rolled around and Aziraphale was like: Repression Mode(tm) Activated
> 
> **Nerd Notes**
> 
> The chivalric romance and the princess-and-dragon trope hardly need much explanation, but I do get to tell you folks about Valac! :D
> 
> According to _The Lesser Key of Solomon,_ Valac is a demon who "appeareth like a Child with Angel's Wings, riding on a Two-headed Dragon. His Office is to give True Answers of Hidden Treasures, and to tell where Serpents may be seen."
> 
> Which I found on accident, and which is utterly perfect.
> 
> (I gave some thought to the winged child thing, but honestly, Valac probably stepped on it by accident ten minutes after being given his corporation.)
> 
> **Next up: Robin Hood-type shenanigans in the Elizabethan era!**


	3. 1568 A.D. - Robin Hood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Sorry, I'd put this at the end note but I've maxed it out talking about Robin Hood, haha)
> 
> [Phantomstardemon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phantomstardemon) has made a couple pieces of beautiful fanart for this chapter!!!!!! You can find them [here](https://singasongrightnow.tumblr.com/post/190666556961/female-badass-crowley-from-the-third-chapter-of) and [here](https://singasongrightnow.tumblr.com/post/190666624781/poetic-nonsense-your-story-a-few-more).
> 
> Also, the reference picture I used for Crowley's outfit, since apparently you nerds like that sort of thing: [this,](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/MargaretAudley.jpg) but with silver instead of gold.

_Oh, dear_ , Aziraphale thought, twisting his hands and studying the gaudily-dressed but rough-mannered taxmen standing implacably in his little printing shop. This was not how he’d envisioned things going at all. He’d tried evasion, explanations, flattery, distractions, even — well, it wasn’t _really_ bribery if it was for a good cause, was it? — but nothing was working.

This was just the kind of situation where Crowley would swoop in and clear things up, he contemplated fervidly.

“Gentlemen, I hardly think it’s necessary —” he tried, and the big one interrupted him almost immediately.

“We’ll tell you what’s necessary. Our commission grants us the authority to search the premises for any more of these.” His hand slammed down on the innocuous little book sitting on the counter which separated Aziraphale from the brutes.

“Who did you get these books from?” asked his compatriot, who had fewer boils but worse breath.

“I don’t think I recall,” Aziraphale said frostily. “And I’m not entirely sure it falls under your purview to ask such a question.”

Oh, dear. That appeared to be the wrong thing to say.

Aziraphale watched the progress of the short one’s hand toward his sword with dread. If something didn’t change soon, he would have to do something drastic, and he didn’t like doing drastic things. He would much rather — oh, if _only_ Crowley were here!

The tax collector’s hand was upon his hilt and the undesirable was looking all but unavoidable when the door flew in with a bang and Crowley practically fell through it.

“Angel!” she greeted loudly as soon as her gaze fell on a rather astonished Aziraphale. “Been a minute, hasn’t it? Got the strangest urge to pop on over and see you just now.”

She was disheveled, Aziraphale noticed through the haze of his shock, with mud streaking the costly brocaded velvet of her dress and — goodness, even up to her nose! — and her face-splitting grin was brighter than the sun.

“ _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale managed, suddenly short of breath.

She sauntered toward the counter, seeming not to register anything unusual about the scene. Luckily the ruffians in official’s clothing seemed to be rendered static by surprise.

“You should finish up here and come on over with me to Spain for a bit. It’s _brilliant_. You know there’s a fashion for black on right now? Stupendously evil-inducing, everyone standing around in the heat at court all day in black velvet, just getting crosser and crosser and — oh, wait a minute.”

Crowley’s head had finally turned toward the taxmen, eyes inscrutable behind the small dark lenses she wore.

“Who are these gentlemen, angel?” she asked, leaning coolly on the narrow counter between Aziraphale and the rest of the gathering and tilting her head ever so slightly toward him.

Aziraphale’s mouth dried, and he remembered suddenly that this was the closest they had been, physically, for about two hundred years.

“We’re the Queen’s tax collectors,” the large one interjected, saving Aziraphale from having to remember words just yet.

“Are you?” Crowley asked, casually, curiously, dangerously, and the smelly one’s hand drifted nervously away from his sword.

“They’re trying to take some of my books,” Aziraphale said in a rush, now that shock had melted all at once into relief and anticipation.

“ _Are_ they?” Crowley asked again, grinning now, a dangerous, pleased, _handsome_ grin.

“ _Banned_ books,” the smelly one corrected superciliously.

His large friend elbowed him surreptitiously, apparently beginning to smell danger.

“Well, my merry friends,” Crowley said cheerfully, pushing her lanky frame off the counter. “It seems we’re at a bit of an impasse. I’ve worked too hard for the spread of knowledge to let you lot try to quash it now.”

The men grew visibly redder, obviously ill-pleased to find someone speaking to them like equals. Probably hadn’t had much of that since they landed commissions to justify their bullying and strong-arming, Aziraphale thought spitefully.

“Her Majesty the Queen’s law forbids the possession of heretical and immoral texts!” The large one postured as though he himself had given her the idea.

“Pssht, queens,” Crowley scoffed, with a dismissive jerk of her head. “Been quite a lot of those, over the years. Doesn’t come to mean much, after a while. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but _immoral_ texts —” Aziraphale shivered at the sordid way she said it — “are a lot more fun. So, let’s settle this like free people, shall we?”

She took a step toward them, spreading her arms inclusively, and the men took a simultaneous step back.

“I’m sure you gentlemen can be _reasonable_ , after all.”

That seemed to be the last straw. The large one flushed like he’d been insulted, and his sword was out in less than a second. His friend followed suit, though it took him a moment of fumbling to draw his own.

Crowley’s grin widened. “Or we can do it that way,” she ceded.

The men seemed bewildered by her lack of fear, and stayed mostly where they were while Crowley turned back to Aziraphale, who was starting to feel quite warm, even before she slung her arm across the counter and leaned in close.

Very close.

Aziraphale was lightheaded, and he suddenly seemed to be able to notice things very rapidly. Crowley smelled of heat and char and good rich soil and spices and clothes that have dried in the sun. Crowley’s eyes peeked from behind her glasses, at this distance, and they were bright and mischievous and intent on Aziraphale’s own. There were black pearls strung through her hair and trimming her cap, like a galaxy of dark stars swirling around her. Her lips were quirked into a private little smile, the sort that suggested a joke shared between just the two of them. Her hand was sneaking down behind the counter, _so close_ to Aziraphale’s hip.

She was _there_ and _close_ and _Crowley_ , and she was leaning in to — to —

— to say conversationally, “Let me just borrow this for a moment, angel,” and pull back with a quarterstaff that _definitely_ was not in the shop just a moment ago.

Oh.

Oh, yes, of course.

Aziraphale could swear that she _winked_ at him then, before she turned around and swung the long end of the staff into the palm of her other hand with a satisfying smack, and smiled convivially at the tax collectors.

“Right then. For the books,” she said.

Aziraphale clutched at the edge of the counter and tried to either breathe properly or stop needing to breathe.

A crowd was forming outside the shop, with quiet murmurs and curious heads drifting in through the open doorway and filling the small windows. The knaves hesitated for a moment, visibly weighing the relative indignity of being seen to attack a woman or being seen to back down from a woman.

Apparently the former was preferable.

They rushed at Crowley with twin bellows of rage, and Aziraphale felt a momentary jolt of fear at the sharp, cruel glint of their blades, but Crowley met them easily, knocking one and then the other effortlessly off course with the staff. The two men each stumbled to stop in one of the corners of the room and turned back to Crowley, who was facing them again with a leisurely half-spin of her weapon.

“Oh, it _has_ been a while since I’ve had a real sporting match,” Crowley announced with relish, and her languorous bravado sent a shiver down Aziraphale’s spine.

The ease with which Crowley had batted them aside seemed to have only fed their fury, and they were both soon making a second charge, with wild thrusts and slashes that came nowhere close to their mark. Crowley’s humble oak staff gave her greater reach than their lethal but short and inexpertly wielded swords, and even under the low ceiling of the shop she blocked and parried and knocked them back with breathtaking ease. No blade was going to come within a foot of her, despite her opponents’ increasingly furious and violent attempts.

Aziraphale watched, transfixed, warm pleasure quickly suffusing his chest once it became clear that the fight was Crowley’s, as soon as she cared to end it. Crowley was vital and lusty, and her grin only brightened as the fight went on. She was, oh, so _physical_ , embracing it in a way Aziraphale had never fully understood, in combat with a pair of humans when she could have just miracled them into unconsciousness. It should rightly have been ridiculous, but — she was _here_ , in Aziraphale’s dusty little shop, _fighting_ for Aziraphale’s books, because he’d wanted her to be here and somehow, from all the way across Europe, she’d _known_.

Aziraphale was helpless to do anything but clutch the book to his overfull chest and look on breathlessly, and try not to think of how — how wonderfully story-like it all was.

He wondered, distantly, when she had learned to fight like this, but it was an idle thought, entirely insignificant when he could watch the insolent flick of her arm to meet another luckless blow, the way her grin stretched wider when one of her opponents tried something particularly ill-advised, the silver accents at her shoulders which seemed to flash with every sinuous twist. Her easy mastery of the confrontation was enthralling, and Aziraphale couldn’t help being caught in its pull.

Crowley let this go on for a minute or two, unruffled and unassailable in the midst of a hail of blows, and then, with a glance at the now clamoring crowd and a wicked grin at Aziraphale, she did something that catapulted Aziraphale’s heart back into his throat.

She knocked her opponents back long enough to deliberately and showily shift her grip toward the middle of the staff, to match the length of their swords.

The crowd went wild.

So did the taxmen.

They practically launched themselves at her, and now Aziraphale gripped white-knuckled at the book for a different reason, because the blades were whistling close to Crowley’s face, her shoulders, her stomach, while she ducked and blocked and wove between them. It was undisguised showing-off, but Aziraphale couldn’t find it within himself to be truly critical. At least she was attacking now, with short jabs and sharp whacks toward stomachs and knees. 

The brutes looked astonished at this sudden flurry of movement, at suddenly having to block blows nearly as buffeting as those they had been delivering, at the fact that Crowley’s advantage hadn’t disappeared with the superior reach of her staff. They tried to keep up, but Crowley was transcendent, moving with impossible fluidity and speed.

Then one of them made a start toward Aziraphale, hand raised threateningly, and Aziraphale could swear he saw Crowley’s eyes _flash_ behind the dark glasses, and it was over.

The end of the staff darted out and connected with the back of the man’s head, and then he wasn’t reaching out so much as collapsing with a loud _thump_. The man’s companion started backward with a panicked expression, but Crowley was already bringing the staff up between his arms to connect solidly with his stomach. He dropped to the ground, wheezing, and Crowley looked stonily at him for one long moment before the overly amiable smile returned, and she leaned down to talk to him in a dark tone.

“That was really quite entertaining, but I think this is the part where you agree to leave my friend and his books alone from now on, isn’t it?”

The man nodded, gasping, but still managing to look deeply unhappy about it.

Crowley’s grin sharpened.

“Good. And while we’re at it, let’s say you contribute these ‘unofficial collections’ back to the community, ey? Widows and orphans and all that,” and she deftly tugged a small but well-filled leather purse out of the man’s doublet with the end of the staff, and flicked it effortlessly out the door and into the crowd.

The people immediately turned away, clamoring for the contents, and Crowley closed the door and the shutters with an indolent snap of her fingers.

The man had recovered enough to look deeply perturbed, and seemed to be about to say something, but Crowley snapped again and he went limp and unconscious.

Crowley straightened up and rolled out her shoulders in ways human forms weren’t strictly supposed to be able to roll.

Then she tucked the end of the staff against her shoulder and turned to Aziraphale, and Aziraphale forgot how to speak again.

Crowley was still flushed and breathing just a touch harder than usual. She was in disarray, mud and sweat and a slash in her skirt where one of the men had chanced a lucky hit, and she was beaming at Aziraphale with honest-to-goodness pride.

Aziraphale had never seen the particular appeal of raw physicality, but he was starting to understand humanity’s eternal fascination with fighters and sportsmen.

He thought of Greek wrestlers, of Donatello’s _David_ , of merry outlaws in suits of Lincoln green.

He felt a bit faint.

“Banned books, angel?" Crowley drawled, ambling over with a distinct swagger. "I'd have thought that'd be on the angelic naughty list."

Aziraphale huffed, swiftly recovering himself. “Don’t be absurd. Besides, they _weren’t_ banned, not when I got them.”

Of course, that had been nearly a hundred years ago.

“Mm.” Crowley's eyebrows lifted in humorous sympathy. "Hard time explaining that to Her Majesty the Queen's tax collectors?"

The joke was at Aziraphale’s expense, but it was fond, and Aziraphale was still feeling so _warm_ over Crowley swooping in to defend his cause, like she had been his _champion_ , so he smiled at Crowley instead of scowling, and agreed.

“Quite. The boors didn’t seem to have any particular interest in listening.” He looked down to the poor mishandled book in his hands, and then dared to glance up with another smile at Crowley. “Thank you for stepping in.”

“Not at all,” Crowley said, uncharacteristically gracious, and then, her voice light, “Lucky I happened to drop by.”

Aziraphale was suddenly too absorbed in checking the book for damage and not reacting at all to figure out if her tone was _suspiciously_ light.

“Yes, lucky, quite,” he managed, and hoped it sounded convincing.

When he looked up, Crowley was leaning on the counter again, head angled down to watch Aziraphale’s hands sweep across the binding of the book. The quarterstaff was nowhere to be seen.

“You’d better hide those a bit better, hadn’t you? Seemed like you were almost in quite a scrape there.”

Aziraphale felt a brief flash of disappointment before he flushed and gathered himself. Yes, of course he couldn’t very well expect to have Crowley swoop in and save him from perfectly avoidable peril every few years; that was absurd and foolish and — well — completely out of the question. It was very kind of Crowley to come this time, after all, whether or not she was aware of why she was doing it, and it was really very nice of her to express concern over the wellbeing of his books.

Who could ask for more?

“Yes, yes of course I will,” he stumbled. “I was just — caught off guard, this time, that’s all. Evidently those brutes had never heard of knocking.”

He sidled out from behind the counter, stepping carefully over the unconscious body of the man who’d tried to take a grab at him, and flashed a smile at Crowley, who was turning with a remarkably soft expression to watch Aziraphale bustle across the small shop and stow the precious little volume safely away in a trunk.

“There!” Aziraphale declared, satisfied, as he turned back to Crowley and the trunk miraculously locked itself. (Aziraphale had been very enthusiastic about locks, but significantly less so about keys and having to keep track of them.) He patted down the front of his doublet (he was wearing a particularly nice one this decade) and felt a rather silly little moment of enjoyment at seeing Crowley watching him with a soft smile, still here in his shop in this brief lull of peace.

Emboldened, he decided, in a brazen flare of impetuousness, to try his luck.

“Would you care to accompany me to the theater? As a thank-you, of course. I’ve been meaning to go. There’s a young man whose poetry I admire, and he’s just taking his first foray into playwriting.”

Crowley paused, seeming to try to compose a diplomatic reply, but the effect was rather ruined by the way her face screwed up. It was dangerously near to being endearing.

“Oh, Crowley, I promise, it’s a _completely_ different beast to the medieval stuff. The English, well, they’re reinventing theater, really. This is more like the Greek ones. Lots of comedy and — and romance.”

He stopped himself there and looked at Crowley hopefully, wondering if he wasn’t being too forward. If perhaps he shouldn’t be trying quite so hard to convince her to go with him. It was just that — Crowley was _here_ , after all, and he had such hopes for this new flush of dramatic literature.

(Surely it was perfectly justifiable to distract a demon from whatever nefarious works of evil she might otherwise be getting up to, for the duration of a perfectly innocent play.)

Crowley shrugged. “Whatever you say, angel. Anything’s better than those morality plays.”

She seemed to be unable to help a grimace as she said that last bit, and secretly Aziraphale couldn’t help but agree.

“Marvelous!” He stood there beaming at Crowley, unsure what to do with himself. He hadn’t actually thought past the asking part.

Crowley silently raised her eyebrows, but her cool and disinterested demeanor was undercut by the lingering flush on her skin. Aziraphale briefly lost himself in the heady remembering of how she had so recently acquired it.

After a long moment, Crowley motioned toward the door. “Shall we, then?”

“Oh! Oh, yes, of course,” Aziraphale said quickly, startled out of his daze and following her as she strode toward the door. He took a habitual glance around the shop and stopped in his tracks. “Erm, Crowley —”

Crowley had the door open when she stopped and turned back, and thankfully it looked as though the crowd had dispersed. She seemed to remember the existence of the unconscious taxmen with the same surprised flash of enlightenment as Aziraphale had. That was gratifying. “Ah.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale agreed, and felt a distinctly unvirtuous flush of relief and pleasure when Crowley raised a hand in an elaborate flourish and the decidedly malodorous men vanished.

“Crowley!” he exclaimed, for appearance’s sake, and he tried very hard to feel as scandalized as he sounded. “You haven’t — they’re not —”

“They’re _fine_ , Aziraphale. They’re going to wake up in a cell in Nantwich on charges of drunkenness and public disturbance.” Crowley sounded more long-suffering than truly irritated, and Aziraphale thought he caught the hint of a smile lingering about her mouth. “Are we going or not?”

“Yes, of course we are,” Aziraphale replied, feeling warmed rather than annoyed by Crowley’s impatience. He had hardly expected her to agree to go with him in the first place, after all.

Buoyed by his success, Aziraphale let Crowley usher him out into the street and ventured to ask the question that had been drifting about in the back of his mind.

“Crowley?”

“Mm?”

“Why _are_ you covered in mud?”

Aziraphale kept his eyes firmly ahead while he asked, in case the query was met with ire, but upon glancing over he found Crowley grinning hugely.

“Administering poetic justice.”

This earned her an accusatory look, which she seemed to accept as her due, grin only widening while she stopped at the crossroads and gestured for Aziraphale to take the lead.

He did, cheeks pinkening for some reason while he waved absent-mindedly to a fruit-seller he knew. “Should I even ask?”

“Probably not,” Crowley replied cheerfully, and waited for Aziraphale to cave against his desire to know and shoot her a slightly frantic look before she would continue. “The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition,” she drawled, pulling out the syllables and unable to keep a mocking sneer out of it by the end.

Aziraphale worked to keep his expression neutral and his distaste contained in the pit of his stomach. “Yes?”

“Pigs. The whole lot of them. Deserve to be treated like it.”

Aziraphale had to work to refrain from replying in the affirmative, and so it took him a moment to understand. When he did, he faltered in his steps with a (truly, this time) scandalized gasp.

“ _Crowley!_ ”

Crowley stopped also, and turned back to Aziraphale with a look of genuine affront. “What? You can’t possibly think it’s anything less than an outrage to any possible measure of justice or, or righteousness.”

Aziraphale pressed his lips tight together, unable to agree and unwilling to contradict.

Crowley seemed to understand, and her expression shifted from irritation to something resembling tiredness. “Come on, angel,” she said, quieter, “you don’t want to be late for your play.”

Aziraphale stood there for a moment, frozen, before Crowley’s relentment could fully thaw him. When it did, he felt his legs untense and he breathed a little sigh before hurrying to rejoin Crowley’s side with a smile.

“Of course, you’re perfectly right. The performance is at an inn just down on Bateman’s Row, they’re mainly done in taverns and the like these days. Oh, but last summer there was this splendid theater on the outskirts of London — it closed down after the summer, but it was _marvelous_ , I do hope they’ll build another if drama gets truly popular again, it’s been such a long time. Now, just in the last few decades they’ve come up with something called _blank verse_ …”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, friends, the visual for which I came up with this whole fic: a female-presenting Crowley bursting bodily through the door of wherever Aziraphale tends to be those days, an absolute mess and absolutely incandescent with glee. This mental image _heals_ me.
> 
> **Nerd Notes**
> 
> So! Robin Hood!
> 
> I'm a major Robin Hood lover, so this might get into the weeds a bit.
> 
> Let's run down a quick list of some key elements to the Robin Hood character/story archetype, before we get into the history:
> 
> \- First and foremost, Robin Hood is down with the people. Robin Hood says "fuck The Man." Robin Hood allies himself to the working classes, in opposition to the wealthy and powerful, and in particular agents of the establishment like tax collectors and the King's foresters (who acted as law enforcement in the huge swathes of land the Crown was taking wholesale from the people who lived there).
> 
> \- Robin Hood is good-humored and jovial, even to his enemies.
> 
> \- Robin Hood uses dirty commoner weapons like bows and staffs, which were accessible to pretty much anyone, as opposed to more noble, high-status Real Warrior's Weapons like swords.
> 
> \- Robin Hood stories often involve contests of strength or skill with these weapons.
> 
> \- I just. I truly need you to understand how hard Robin Hood says "fuck The Man."
> 
> \----
> 
> The earliest known Robin Hood ballads come from the mid-late 15th century (1400s), and it's clear that there was an oral tradition before that because he's referenced in works as early as the 1370s! At this stage, his character is a bit rough around the edges, and a lot of the traits and tropes we now associate with him are absent -- though his loyalty and support for the lower classes and his skill as an archer are already present (as are many familiar characters, though, conspicuously, not Maid Marian or Friar Tuck).
> 
> But written works at this stage are a bit of a rare thing in society of the time, and certainly one with a class barrier, as you had to have access to special education to write or even read. So Robin Hood stays primarily in folk tradition. (It seems he showed up quite a lot in community celebrations, plays, and games!)
> 
> But then the printing boom of the 16th century happens, and all of a sudden we've got broadside ballads out the wazoo! (Broadsides were the most common form of printed material -- pages of cheap paper printed on one side with poems or songs or news or what have you.) Suddenly anyone can get their hands on a Robin Hood story for a few pennies! (And as it's a written form, it's easier for us to trace the development of the stories!) Robin Hood had traveled from a primarily oral tradition to a primarily printed one by the end of the 16th century, and we know a lot more from here onward.
> 
> So now he's more accessible to everyone, and so he enjoys a massive rise in popularity! He became so popular during the Elizabethan era, in fact, that the Queen started getting concerned about what kind of messages he was sending, since his stories were about a commoner dude fighting the rich on behalf of other common people. So she had some of her people work on a rebranding of Robin Hood that has managed to stick around and annoy the hell out of me to this day:
> 
> In order to make him a "safer" figure, they recast Robin Hood, who had always been a commoner who'd been abused by the system and said "fuck it, this won't stand," as a **Good Nobleman** who'd been robbed by Bad Noblemen while he was off fighting in the King's Righteous Wars (the Crusades) and now he's trying to get his land and money back.
> 
> This version has stuck, and is still used as Robin Hood's backstory in a TON of stuff, and it pisses me off so badly every single time. I'm going to stop now because if I don't it's going to be a full-blown Rant.
> 
> \-----
> 
> Aziraphale is hopping on the English Renaissance Theater wagon before it's cool! It's usually defined as starting in 1562, with the first production of Gorboduc, and ending in 1642, when the Puritans took over and shut all that "fun" shit down.
> 
> (No, seriously, there was a law passed against plays, which lasted EIGHTEEN YEARS until the interregnum ended. EIGHTEEN YEARS!!)
> 
> It, of course, includes such legends as Shakespeare, Jonson, Marlowe, and Peele, and really hit its stride in the 1580s.
> 
> The theater Aziraphale mentions at the end there is the short-lived Red Lion theater, which, although it had a bigass stage complete with cool shit like trapdoors and a TURRET FOR AERIAL STUNTS, only lasted one summer before closing down. (Yes, I'm salty.) The next purpose-built playhouse opened in 1576, and it was. it was just called. The Theater. because it was the only one.
> 
> If you don't think that's funny, I don't know what to tell you.
> 
> **Next up: Highwaymen!**


	4. 1684 A.D. - Highwaymen

Aziraphale tried to be discreet in his shifting as he sought to make himself as comfortable as it was possible to get, crammed into a carriage with three other people. He smoothed his hands across the precious bundle of books in his lap and reminded himself with a sigh that it was all worth it for the chance to go to Oxford and see the new university library. (He hadn’t been since 1446, when it was mostly Duke Humfrey’s manuscript collection.)

His discomfort was hardly Master and Madame Wilkins’ fault. Aziraphale found them to be excellent conversationalists, usually — very good to dine with — and Wilkins, the administrator of the new Bodleian Library, had kindly invited him to come up with them and their son and spend a few weeks wandering the stacks. He’d even suggested Aziraphale bring a few of his own books, to cross-reference them with the library’s specimens. It was a fine day, sunny and balmy as the English summer started to hint at autumn, and their little party had left London in high spirits. It was just that, well, three hours in a richly furnished but cramped carriage was enough to make anyone a little antsy.

It didn’t help that the conversation had taken a turn that put Aziraphale on edge.

“I don’t see that there’s anything exciting about the prospect of being robbed by armed ruffians.”

“Don’t be willfully obtuse. Highwaymen are hardly _ruffians!_ They’re gentlemen laid low by the vagaries of fortune and forced to turn outlaw to support themselves,” Madame Wilkins sighed.

“Whatever they may have been, they’re little more than glorified thugs and horse thieves now. The few that may have started out as dispossessed gentlemen are hardly worthy of the title once they’ve stooped to the ignominy of their low-born compatriots.”

“Tosh! There’s many a highwayman more genteel than the pompous men of state. Why, I attended Claude Duval’s hanging, oh -- well, some years ago, and he was supremely courteous to all us ladies. I believe _I_ may have caught his eye, in particular, as he very distinctly winked at me.”

Young Christopher had been quiet for most of the ride, but he spoke up now, hesitant but with starry-eyed interest. “Did he really, Mother?”

“He did indeed,” Madame Wilkins answered emphatically, and Aziraphale made a mental note to give the poor lad a blessing and a bit of a nudge toward the stable boys when they arrived. He’d never get anywhere in the way of romance, dogged as he was by his mother’s well-meant but overbearing presence.

“Claude Duval was a murderer and a parasite upon society,” Wilkins declared officiously, turning his nose up as though the very name offended him. “He was a dissolute lecher no better or more gallant than the type found in any county prison.”

“For the master of a library, husband, you are remarkably ill-read. I’m sure Master Fell, as a dedicated reader, will tell you that highwaymen are chivalrous and adventuresome.”

“Oh, I’m sure I can’t tell you much beyond sensationalist tales. Most of them rather gruesome,” Aziraphale said quickly, not eager to find himself in the middle of a marital argument.

He couldn’t deny the romanticism of the figure of the highwayman — he had more than a few broadside ballads and penny-novels stashed away in his collection, after all — but he didn’t have any particular interest in running into any himself, and certainly not while he had several of his more precious volumes with him. 

A common thug wouldn’t know the value of them, and might mishandle or even destroy them. A gentleman-turned-rogue _would_ understand their value, and might try to take them. Aziraphale wasn’t sure which would be worse.

“I will never understand why women will insist upon elevating these bandits upon the pedestal of romantic fantasy.”

“You gentlemen try to buy a woman’s heart with jewels,” Madame Wilkins pointed out shrewdly. “Why do you find it so difficult to believe that a highwayman can steal it with them?”

Wilkins didn’t seem to have an answer for that. “Shocking degradation of public morality,” he declared instead.

Unbidden, Aziraphale’s mind wandered to Crowley and how amused he would be at this turn in the conversation. He wondered what Crowley was up to these days. He hadn’t seen him in almost fifty years, not since Crowley popped round to London and grimly asked if there was any angelic business Aziraphale needed done in Essex. Aziraphale had been absorbed in cataloguing his collection at the time, and had hardly given the incident a moment’s notice, but… looking back, that had been about the time one stopped hearing about that awful Witchfinder man, wasn’t it?

Silly conjecture, of course, but he couldn’t help but wonder.

“-- and besides, there’s no need to bother about it,” Wilkins was saying when Aziraphale drifted back out of his reverie. “We’re traveling in broad daylight across unforested land, with a light coach and good horses. We’re in no danger whatsoever from whatever knaves may call themselves highwaymen.”

A shot rang out from the front of the carriage, and all its occupants were thrown about as the horses pulled to a sudden stop.

As Aziraphale righted himself, fretting over his parcel of books, he heard the dull thudding of hooves striking hard-packed soil and a rising chorus of boisterous whoops and hollers that quickly surrounded the coach. Through the windows, figures on horseback could be seen circling, faces obscured by masks or scarves, and jeering at the driver.

Oh, _bother._ These things always happened to him, didn’t they?

He did some quick thinking. The simplest thing to do would just be to temporarily miracle away the books, until the rogues were done ransacking the carriage and its occupants -- but, no, three-hundred-year-old volumes were, of course, far too fragile to be popped in and out of existence like that, no matter how well Aziraphale had kept them -- and, besides, there were the humans to consider. They were bound to find that a bit disconcerting, and Aziraphale had worked so hard -- well -- Aziraphale had put _some_ effort, at any rate, into building a social circle for himself as a human, and he would rather not let it all tumble down over a pack of highway robbers.

He supposed he could get out of the carriage and… _persuade_ the ruffians to let them depart unmolested, but, again, there were the humans to think about. Perhaps...

He glanced around at his fellow passengers, who seemed to be in various states of shock, but there wasn’t a moment to think further, because the carriage door was being ripped violently open.

A young man with a dark piece of fabric masking the lower half of his face leaned into the carriage, smelling strongly of sweat and horse and pointing a pistol at Madame Wilkins.

“Your jewels or your life,” he demanded, in the sort of voice young men used when they wanted to seem older than they were.

Madame Wilkins wordlessly reached back with shaky fingers to unclasp her necklace. It took her a few tries, and the young miscreant wagged his gun impatiently at her. When she dropped the bauble into his hand, he added, “And the rings.”

Madame Wilkins complied, looking as though she were enjoying her encounter with highwaymen rather less than she had imagined she might.

Aziraphale selfishly hoped that the reprobate would content himself with the Wilkinses’ valuables, and neglect to accost him.

Then the young hoodlum turned his gun on Aziraphale, and the last vestiges of Aziraphale’s hope sputtered out. “Your parcel, too, _Master Gentleman_.” The last was sneered.

Aziraphale clutched his bundle to his chest. “Now — now look here, young man, I’m sure you don’t want to do anything rash, and these books are quite delicate, you know —”

The ruffian jabbed his gun closer to Aziraphale’s chest. “Your parcel, _now_.”

Aziraphale looked helplessly to Wilkins, who for all his earlier bravado was turning a greenish white and trembling like a mouse.

Honestly.

He tried again, starting to feel a bit frantic from the heady mix of desperation and annoyance. “Look, I hardly expect you’ll have any use for a treatise on Aristotle and Islamic philosophy, and if you do the sensible thing and leave me be, I’m sure I can find a bit of coin —”

One of the muffled voices from outside paused in telling the coachman where he could stick his matchlock, and broke into an incredulous exclamation.

“ _Aziraphale?!_ ”

Aziraphale stopped eyeing the gun and wondering if he could miracle the bullet out of it without anyone noticing. Or everything going horribly wrong.

“ _Crowley?_ ”

Before Aziraphale could think, Crowley’s voice was grumbling, “Back off, Boyle,” and the gun-wielding teenager was being shoved aside. Crowley gaped at him from the doorway — and, oh, it _was_ him — dressed overdramatically in a dark, billowy cloak and a ridiculous three-pointed hat. He wasn’t masked like the others, but, Aziraphale supposed distantly, between his dark glasses and his distinct lack of need for a respectable alias, he probably didn’t need one. His mouth was distractingly red. “It _is_ you! ...you were _arguing_ with an armed man over a couple of books?!”

“They’re Ibn Rušds,” Aziraphale defended on reflex, overwhelmed by the rush of astonishment, relief, bewilderment, giddy disbelief, and the sheer _goodness_ of seeing Crowley again. It had barely been thirty years, of course, and they had used to go _centuries_ without seeing each other, but now that they had their Arrangement, things were different, and it was possible Aziraphale was getting a bit spoiled. Crowley was staring at him with that odd, disbelieving look he got sometimes, almost as though he were on the verge of hysterical tears, and Aziraphale’s heart got a funny floating feeling as he stared back.

He shouldn’t have been quite so surprised, really; Crowley was making rather a wonderful habit of showing up when Aziraphale was in peril, and —

Wait.

Aziraphale quickly reviewed the last few minutes.

...This time Crowley was _with_ the peril!

“You’re _mixed up_ in this — this iniquitous brigandage!” he accused, indignant. He tightened his hold on his treasures and glared at Crowley, feeling somewhat betrayed and very silly for it. “I am _not_ donating my first translations to fund your degenerate cohorts' life of debauchery,” he informed him tartly.

Slowly, Crowley stopped looking shocked and started grinning, slow and avaricious and deviously gleeful. A shiver shocked down Aziraphale’s spine. “Of course not, yeah. It looked like you had it all under control.”

Aziraphale grasped, flustered, for some kind of retort, but he came up empty-handed. He was rapidly remembering that he hadn’t been immune to London’s fascination with the image of the highwayman, and also that Crowley much better resembled the romantic outlaw of the penny-novels — the daring, roguish hero dressed in black — than any of the others. For one hysterical moment he wondered if the whole figure hadn’t been based on Crowley in the first place, wondered how long he had been at this.

He settled on shutting his mouth and glowering at Crowley, hoping his cheeks hadn’t gone as red as they felt.

Crowley’s grin only widened. He visibly raked his gaze over Aziraphale, and, oh, that didn’t help at _all_. “Nice coat,” he drawled wickedly.

Aziraphale flushed. Crowley was mocking, surely, but his sardonic tone almost sounded _salacious_ instead.

“I could say as much to you,” he managed to reply, remembering to be piqued. “That hat is utterly hideous. Only you would wear such a ridiculous thing.”

At least he’d gotten rid of that _horrible_ beard from the turn of the century.

Crowley’s smile dimmed for a moment, but then it was returning in full force and Crowley was reaching into the carriage to extend a gloved hand to him. Aziraphale’s heart fluttered alarmingly.

“Well, as long as I’ve got you _at my mercy_ , angel,” Crowley began, with a beguiling grin that did dangerous things to Aziraphale’s pulse, “care to come with me for a moment?”

Aziraphale’s mouth was suddenly dry. Only now did he realize that the rest of the thieves had gone quiet, waiting to see what their apparent leader was up to, and were staring at Aziraphale. For that matter, his fellow passengers were, too. Aziraphale flushed.

Of course he was in no actual danger from Crowley (and as he watched, Crowley’s playful grin settled into a fonder smile). But Crowley did seem to be enjoying playing the role, and it would be terribly rude to undermine him in front of his compatriots, no matter how much Aziraphale disapproved of Crowley’s new pastime.

Additionally, his attempts to be aggrieved at the imperilment of his books were rapidly failing in the face of just how _good_ it was to see Crowley again.

“If you insist,” Aziraphale said, trying to sound reluctant in order to hide the sudden hammering of his heart, and reached out to deliver his hand into Crowley’s firm grasp. “You fiend,” he added, for good measure.

Crowley’s grin brightened to the point of dazzling. He chivalrously helped Aziraphale — still clutching his books to his chest with his other arm — out of the coach, and when he let go Aziraphale secretly mourned the loss of the touch.

Apparently Wilkins now thought the situation sufficiently dire as to warrant action, and he leaned out of the carriage with the start of a protest. The glare Crowley sent him was so murderous that he immediately shrank back, as white as a piece of fine linen.

Aziraphale furtively shot Crowley an admonishing look.

Crowley only lifted his eyebrows at him, looking thoroughly unimpressed, and suddenly Aziraphale found it very difficult not to give in and smile, because, oh, he had _missed_ Crowley, missed this, and Crowley seemed to understand; they stood there for a long moment, staring silently at each other, while half-a-dozen humans looked on in mystification.

Then there was a loud bang as the man blocking the front of the carriage fired a warning shot at the would-be escapee coachman, and Aziraphale startled and remembered where they were.

“Really, Crowley, _highway robbery?_ ” Aziraphale reproached, shrinking a bit closer to Crowley’s side as he noticed Boyle watching him with resentful malice. He clutched his books tighter. He may have nothing to fear from Crowley, but his new companions seemed rather less inclined to act like gentlemen.

Crowley snorted. “I rather thought you’d like this one. Stealing from the rich and undeserving, and all that. Would you prefer I were breaking houses or starting wars? Besides,” he added, without waiting for an answer, “it’s right good fun.”

Aziraphale could _hear_ his grin, and made a faint noise of disapproval as he tried not to imagine Crowley in action, all brazen confidence and easy command. He could practically _feel_ the eyes of the Wilkinses burning into him. “Well, I — I hardly think...”

“Prove it to you,” Crowley said, unbothered. “Oi, Carew!”

“Yeah?” said the one who’d been rifling through the trunks at the back of the coach.

“We’ve still got that luncheon basket we liberated from the Mayor of Reading, haven’t we?”

“Think so. Reckon it might have gone a bit funny by now, though.”

“Oh, I think it’ll be all right,” Crowley remarked with cryptic amusement.

Aziraphale flushed in surprised pleasure as he realized what was going on. “Really, Crowley,” he fussed, trying not to be so transparent. “I can’t very well sit down in good conscience and eat a _stolen meal_.”

“Not really stolen if he paid for it with bribe money, is it?” Crowley rebutted, leading him out, with one hand on the small of his back, onto the open heath. Aziraphale had to admit, it would make the most lovely picnicking spot. “I could tell you a thing or two about your friends, too, by the way.”

“Please don’t,” Aziraphale said unhappily. He rather liked the Wilkinses, and he didn’t want that to change before he got to see the library.

“You’re not serious,” Boyle griped as Carew staggered over under the weight of a large wooden basket. “You’re wasting the food on some passing fancy? I looked, there’s good stuff in there!”

“Oh, shove it, you berk,” the man holding the carriage’s horses said. “You like tavern roast beef and beer better anyway.”

“That’s most of our haul for the day,” Boyle insisted, ignoring his colleague. “The mayor and his tart only had thirty quid and a few rings, else!”

Crowley turned back around with a snarl. “I’m taking the food as my share. If you don’t like it, you’re welcome to take yours and piss off. Find someone else to join up with or go back to mortgaging your mother’s estates to cover your debts, for all I care.”

That did the trick. Boyle scowled and went back to pointing his weapon at Wilkins, and the man at the horses rolled his eyes and asked, “If we’re going to be here a while, boss, you want me to shoot the horses?”

“Nah,” said Crowley, returning easily to his usual swagger, as he pushed Aziraphale gently to sit on the blanket Carew had spread out. “Why don’t you unharness them and let ‘em graze, though.” He flopped down beside Aziraphale in an ungainly sprawl. “It’s a _long_ way to Oxford, and we wouldn’t want to repay these _good people_ ’s —” he mockingly overenunciated this bit at Aziraphale — “generosity by putting them out of their way.”

“In that case, why are you keeping me here?” Aziraphale asked in a petulant manner, mostly to continue the squabble so Crowley wouldn’t think he’d won.

Crowley arched one irritatingly eloquent eyebrow in his direction. At the moment, the eyebrow was saying, _So you don’t want to stick around for the meal, then?_

Aziraphale clamped his mouth shut and tried to think of a way to get Crowley to stop looking so triumphant without forfeiting the opportunity to keep his company for the length of an entire meal — a very hearty-looking meal that promised to take the better part of the afternoon to properly savor.

He couldn’t think of any.

“Morally reprehensible to pass up good company, angel,” Crowley said smugly, taking off a glove and rummaging around in the basket.

“You’re one to talk of morality,” Aziraphale scoffed, as though Crowley’s offhand remark wasn’t warming him more than the smell of a very well-spiced roast duck.

“What about _Milord and Lady?_ ” Boyle piped up again, with the sheer vitriolic contempt for his own social peers that only a disaffected teenager could produce.

“They can wait a while,” Crowley grinned, and it might have been contemptuous but for the gleam of mischief in his eye. (Aziraphale could swear it could be seen regardless of Crowley’s spectacles… though it was possible he was looking too closely.) “It’s a lovely day, after all. Good to stop and enjoy the fresh air.”

This seemed to cheer Boyle up, and he turned happily back to continue terrorizing Aziraphale’s erstwhile companions.

Aziraphale really supposed he ought to feel worse about that, but it was difficult to focus on while Crowley was handing him a plate laden with bread, grapes, a scrupulously generous cut of duck, and one perfectly blush-ripe peach.

“Thank you,” he said, and Crowley made a face and stole one of his grapes. Well, that was comfortingly familiar.

“How did you know we were going to Oxford?” Aziraphale asked idly, humming as he bit into the peach. No doubt it was some sort of demonic espionage.

“Where else would you be going?”

Aziraphale stopped short, a piece of meat raised most of the way to his mouth. “What?”

Crowley looked amused. “They’ve got books there. And you haven’t left London except on assignment in the last two hundred years.”

“Wh — _I have so!_ ”

“Name one time you did,” Crowley challenged, reaching out to swipe a finger through duck sauce and pop it into his mouth.

Aziraphale almost got distracted.

“I went to Rochester in 1606 to have dinner with Sir Peter Buck and the King of Denmark,” he informed Crowley with a superior air.

Crowley only shrugged. “Basically London.”

“I — wh —” Aziraphale gaped. “It is _not_ , and you know it!”

Crowley grinned. “Yeah, all right. So, Denmark, ey? That would’ve been… Christian the One-of-Them.”

“Christian IV,” Aziraphale corrected, finally taking a bite of duck. It was delicious, and perfectly fresh.

“Right, yeah — he was the one who came over and scandalized all you posh types with his thirst, wasn’t he?”

Aziraphale sniffed and tried to change the subject. “He was a great patron of the arts and an accomplished strategist.”

Crowley was smirking in earnest now. “Yeah, and he came over to dinner and what happened?”

Aziraphale held out for a few valiant seconds, but the infectious energy of Crowley’s gleeful anticipation was too much. “And he drank me under the table,” he admitted resentfully.

Crowley’s delighted guffaw should have been (and very nearly was) unendurable, but even as he scowled Aziraphale couldn’t help feeling that the sight of Crowley’s unrestrained laughter was rare enough to make up for the indignity.

“That really is a very absurd hat,” he told Crowley, instead of saying what he was thinking.

“And what, ruffs and farthingales weren’t absurd?” Crowley returned, so easily that Aziraphale felt something tighten in his chest. “It’s gonna be _the height of fashion_ , angel, you’ll see.”

“Never,” Aziraphale maintained. Crowley only shrugged and smiled crookedly at him.

Aziraphale let his thoughts drift while Crowley launched into a studiously indifferent account of some recent exploit of his, and thought about the motley collection of humans waiting not thirty feet away — waiting on _them_ , for them to eat a _picnic_ together, as though Crowley had somehow stopped the turning of the world to lavish him with sumptuous, earthly indulgences. Crowley could stop time, of course, and he could have just now, but he _hadn’t_ , and this was somehow even more extravagant. It _did_ mean they were being watched, and a small, selfish part of Aziraphale wished they weren’t. It was greedy and he knew it, but — how nice it was, and how rare, to sit here with Crowley and talk about nothing in particular, and he didn’t want to share it.

At the same time, though, there was a certain thrill to it, thinking about the sight they must make. It certainly wouldn’t look like the dastardly villain and his terrified prisoner. It wouldn’t even look like a reunion of old acquaintances, not with the extravagance of the gunpoint (figuratively) luncheon and the way Crowley had angled himself toward Aziraphale. It would look like a _seduction_ , like a page out of the exploits of some apocryphal robber hero, with Aziraphale as the swooning maiden and Crowley as the dangerously charming rogue. Aziraphale flushed and chastened himself every time the thought crossed his mind, but it was _there_ and Aziraphale could hardly be blamed for observing a simple truth, could he?

“Are you listening, Aziraphale?” Crowley sounded ever so slightly peevish.

“Yes, yes, of course,” Aziraphale replied quickly, hiding how flustered he was by fussing with the bread. “You were with the Chief Magistrate of Leeds, do go on.”

Crowley peered at him suspiciously but continued his story. Aziraphale settled in to actually listen this time, and the end had him bursting into startled laughter.

At that, Crowley looked like he’d just personally finished the Sistine, and Aziraphale couldn’t help the way his heart swelled in his chest.

He asked some silly, leading question — anything to keep Crowley talking — and Crowley took the bait with gusto, sitting up in order to gesticulate and looking happier than Aziraphale had seen him in almost a century.

The eyes on them ceased to be important, then, and Aziraphale was helpless to do anything but smile warmly at him, _ahh_ and _mm-hm_ at the right places, bask in the golden warmness of Crowley’s presence, his vigor and enthusiasm.

They continued on like that for hours, talking and laughing and swapping stories of the last few centuries. Crowley continued to filch bits from Aziraphale’s plate and smile wickedly when his outrageous remarks managed to scandalize Aziraphale. Aziraphale occasionally got so wrapped up in it all that he forgot about the meal, and Crowley wryly reminded him, “Eat your food, angel,” in a way that made Aziraphale’s heart stutter and skip. By the time the two of them had managed to polish off most of the repast, the world had simmered down to the warm glow of sunlight, the purple-brown stretch of the heath, and the easy way Crowley lounged across the blanket with him, sharp and lazy and terribly dashing. Aziraphale’s chest ached pleasantly with it, like the insistent fullness one feels after eating ever so slightly too much of a very good meal.

It was almost rude when he realized that the only things that lay between them were crumbs and an empty basket, that the sun had sunk toward the horizon and they were out of excuses.

Crowley seemed to notice the same thing, and he levered himself to his feet with a theatrical sigh. 

“Suppose I can’t keep you forever,” he grinned, deftly snagging the laid-aside parcel of books with one hand and offering Aziraphale the other. “No rest for the wicked, and all that.”

“You’re not meant to be _pleased_ when you say that,” Aziraphale chided as he let Crowley pull him up, making a show of brushing crumbs off his clothes afterward as though they hadn’t all disappeared before making contact with his pristine waistcoat.

“Speak for yourself, angel,” Crowley told him cheerfully, putting a hand on his back again to steer him back towards the road. “Practically part of the job description. Iniquitous brigandage, and all that.”

Aziraphale shot him an exasperated look that wasn’t actually particularly exasperated, and let Crowley guide him along. It was comforting to fall back into their long-established back-and-forth as the strange, dreamlike moment faded and the world — in the form of one carriage, seven humans, a handful of horses, and far too many guns — came back into view.

Seven pairs of curious and almost accusatory eyes were fixed on them, and Aziraphale felt reality inching back down his spine like a seeping shiver. But Crowley’s hand was still hovering palpably over the small of his back, and the humans seemed as much under Crowley’s sway as Aziraphale was — none of them moved a muscle, save for the masked man reharnessing the horses to the coach — so Aziraphale clasped his hands together and didn’t blush too badly as they walked into the thick of a tense and anticipatory silence.

They stopped outside the open carriage door, and Aziraphale had almost reconciled himself to getting in and parting ways with Crowley — but then Crowley neatly dodged the hand Aziraphale had reached out toward the books he still carried. He caught it instead, and brought it slowly toward his lips.

Aziraphale realized two things at the same time: what was about to happen, and the fact that Crowley hadn’t put his gloves back on.

He couldn’t move.

Crowley gave him plenty of time — ages, it felt like, and he heard a muffled gasp from the direction of the carriage — and when Crowley’s lips made contact with the backs of his fingers, in a chaste, light brush of skin, the angle of his bow meant that Aziraphale could see his eyes, staring into Aziraphale’s own over the tops of his dark spectacles.

Aziraphale couldn’t breathe.

Finally — though it had only been a second — Crowley’s lips lifted, and they quirked into a little smirk that wasn’t much better for Aziraphale’s pretense of corporeality.

“A small memento,” he said, handing back Aziraphale’s books, and Aziraphale thought he might discorporate on the spot. (He also thought Crowley was going a bit red, but that was probably his imagination.)

Crowley waited a moment, apparently for Aziraphale to do something.

Aziraphale didn’t (couldn’t).

The smirk morphed into a small, wicked grin, and Crowley reached out to gently grasp Aziraphale’s elbow and maneuver him up into the waiting carriage.

Aziraphale quickly regained self-awareness, and found that his cheeks felt ready to combust at any moment and that he was clutching his books to his chest as though they were the only things tethering him to life. His fingers were numb.

He sat down, still dazed, (Wilkins had scooted back to give him room) and watched Crowley flash him a last conspiratorial grin before turning to the others with a false, unnerving smile.

“Your _kindly patronage_ is appreciated,” he drawled in long, mocking syllables.

Then the door closed and Crowley disappeared from view. Whoops of “Go on, then, sirrah! Get out of here!” and “Wot’cha waiting for, then, Jack?” rose up from all sides of the coach, before a gunshot startled the horses into action and the raucous laughter fell behind.

It wasn’t until the first moment of silence that Aziraphale truly realized that he would have to spend the next two hours right where he was, and three pairs of shocked and expectant eyes were trained firmly on him with the burning determination of being committed to hearing nothing less than _every detail_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Nerd Notes**
> 
> So! Highwaymen!
> 
> Highway robbers have been around pretty much since humanity has had long stretches of road between urban hubs. Until quite recently, the roads that connected even a densely-populated place like England were basically lawless, because there was no real way to police them. And everyone had to use the same highways, even the extremely rich. Your only protection out there was whatever you took with you, be that armed guards or even just a gun or a really fast horse.
> 
> The Great Age of Highwaymen in Britain, though, started in 1649, with the end of the English Civil War and the victory of the Parliamentarians. All of a sudden you have a TON of aristocratic Royalist soldiers who are: angry, because they lost; in a socially precarious position anyway, because the English Civil War was highly political and involved a clash of culture and philosophy, and, well, they lost; in large numbers stripped of their land and property by the new Parliamentarian government; and also fresh out of nine years of having been soldiers.
> 
> This is a perfect mix for a boom of highwaymen.
> 
> (By the way, whenever you want to find an era of cool outlaw adventurers, or you want to make one for a story or something, look for the periods just after massive wars. Highwaymen after the English Civil War, Golden Age of Piracy after the War of the Spanish Succession, etc. The real catalyst you need is tons of soldiers suddenly out of a job they liked and tons of regular people whose livelihoods have been destroyed, so there's no real reason not to turn to CRIME.)
> 
> Highwaymen were a real shock to the cultural system, because crime was considered the province of the lower classes, and being a highwayman had a real wealth barrier, especially at the start of this period: you had to have a horse and the means to support it, you had to have guns, you had to have the means to keep yourself up while you got started. Highwaymen were people of high birth who had the looks and the clothes and the manners to blend in with the rich people they were going to rob, and they frequently took advantage of that to gain their victims' trust.
> 
> So, naturally, almost immediately, people (by which I mostly mean the middle and lower classes) began romanticizing the SHIT out of them.
> 
> Which brings us to Claude Duval.
> 
> Claude Duval was the man who brought sex appeal to the highwayman image. He was the footman to a Royalist gentleman who returned from France when Charles II had retaken the throne and restored the monarchy, and the philosophy of the newly reinstated Royalist court was "we won in the end, now let's just party nonstop until we die." (Footmen, it should be noted, were at this point armed guards, chosen for their height and good looks, for their employers, who were SUPER exposed to the society their employers were part of and therefore were basically rock stars and/or highwaymen in training.) Duval liked drinking, gambling, and women, and he didn't have the money to support his lifestyle, so he turned to highway robbery. He was known for being gallant and courteous to women. Here's a particularly famous story about him:
> 
> One day Claude Duval and his posse stop a carriage with a man and his beautiful wife, who is unafraid of Duval (and in some versions plays a tune on her flute to demonstrate how unbothered she is). This intrigues Duval, who stops the whole robbery in order to dance a "courante" with her while his buddies play music for them, after which he lets both the travelers go relatively unrobbed. It's gone down as a Legendary Romantic Moment.
> 
> I have changed it to a picnic for no-dancing reasons and also peak-romance reasons.
> 
> The decline of the highwayman came around the beginning of the eighteenth century, with stricter laws that allowed for greater enforcement, but the highwayman really, definitively, became obsolete with the rise of the steam train, since the rich now could just not take the roads when they traveled.
> 
> As for Matthew Hopkins, the self-proclaimed Witchfinder General, he was a religious fanatic who made himself the career of going around to various towns and villages and extracting a fee in exchange for torturing confessions out of the townspeople's suspected witches (the vast majority of whom were societally vulnerable people who the rest of the community were tired of taking care of -- the old, the disabled, women who were brash or grumpy or otherwise Not How A Woman Should Be). He got more people executed for witchcraft than had been in the last hundred years combined. His total is usually estimated at somewhere between two and three hundred people, depending on your source. And he was only active for three years. Now, I'm not saying Crowley killed him. I'm just saying I find it doubtful in the extreme that Crowley would have let that stand.
> 
> **Next up: Regency swashbuckling!**


	5. 1824 A.D. - Swashbucklers

“Do you understand, Angel Aziraphale?”

“Oh, yes, yes, perfectly,” Aziraphale replied quickly, turning his eyes from the front of the bookshop. “Everything sounds well in order, of course.” He flashed a diplomatic smile.

The Angel Haniel, Leader of the Principalities, looked askance at him but continued her explanation.

Aziraphale breathed a comforting sigh, and was thankful that Haniel had apparently accepted his explanation regarding breathing. (The explanation ran as follows: breathing was a necessary habit when interacting undercover with humans, but easy to forget about, so best not to _fall off the wagon_ — a phrase Crowley had delighted in introducing to him circa 1782. That last part he had, of course, not mentioned to Haniel.)

The managing director of the Principalities was here for Aziraphale’s quarter-century assessment, which sounded regular enough but actually tended to skip around a bit depending on when someone remembered about it. Aziraphale’s backlog of miracles for the past 31 years had been painstakingly gone over, and now he was being caught up on every single policy change from Heaven — whether or not they actually applied to him. As far as he could tell, it was mostly wording revisions, and the last big policy shift was still in place, unaltered.

(That had been No More Conspicuous Miracles in the Presence of Humans, 1759 — Aziraphale had gotten dizzy trying to figure out whether to be relieved at never going to be assigned more of those, or wary about the possible ramifications of the unusually vague wording of the new rule. Crowley had been with him when he got the memo, and when on her next visit she found Aziraphale still worried, she dragged him to a French salon and pushed quite a lot of very nice champagne at him. That had settled his nerves rather nicely.)

The meeting had been going on for nine hours already, and showed no signs of drawing to a close.

Ordinarily, this would have been fine — it always made Aziraphale a little nervous, and he was rapidly coming to the conclusion that he didn’t like having the Heavenly Host in his bookshop, but really it was business as usual, all fine — except that he’d made plans with Crowley for lunch and that fellow Rossini’s latest opera, and if Haniel was still here in an hour, when Crowley was due to collect him…

Aziraphale could only hope that the coded message he had managed to scribble out and put up in the door, explaining to Haniel that it would keep humans from coming in and interrupting them — _Closed for Visit from Regional Manager_ , it read — was clear enough, and that Crowley actually stopped to read it before strolling in with a box of sweets and that electrifyingly easy manner he had nowadays. (They had had more and more cause to bump into each other, now that the humans had started cramming more and more of themselves into cities, and, oh, wasn’t that newfound familiarity coming back to haunt Aziraphale now!)

Still, he couldn’t help but keep glancing anxiously toward the front door, slowly being torn apart between desperate hope that Crowley would see the sign and leave quickly and unnoticed, and suffocating disappointment at the thought of him actually doing so.

It was foolish and absurd — not to mention dangerous.

Aziraphale picked up a mislaid book and wandered over to put it in the rapidly expanding poetry section, with a smile and nod at Haniel, in order to put a bookshelf firmly between him and the front windows.

He grimly congratulated himself on the exercise of self-control — mortification of the desires, Uriel called it — and tried his best to listen to Haniel. He also tried not to think about the fact that this could very well go on for days.

It was dreadfully tedious stuff, though, and Aziraphale couldn’t help his mind wandering a bit, so he was rather quick to notice when the sounds of an unusual hubbub began to crescendo outside the shop.

“What in Heaven’s name —” he couldn’t help muttering, turning reflexively to investigate the noise.

Haniel appeared to have been reaching the end of one topic anyhow, and gave Aziraphale an openly mystified look, seeming to assume — correctly — that Aziraphale had picked up some Earthly cue she had not. She had been obviously ill at ease with the whole Earth thing since she arrived, and seemed to vaguely pity Aziraphale his station here. It still made Aziraphale ache a little to be reminded that the rest of the Host seemed to be missing the point entirely on God’s most complex and wonderful creation, but at least it wasn’t the archangels’ open disdain.

He moved back over to the aisle, and Haniel followed. Sure enough, there was a jostling, riotously well-mannered crowd of people just outside the door to the shop, and Aziraphale felt a new burst of dread. He couldn’t think what it could possibly be about, but there were quite a lot of elbows very near to both his fine glass windows and the vulnerable sides of other increasingly-annoyed crowd members, and that was never a good thing.

Aziraphale stammered out, “I’d — I think I’d better —” and gave up on words, striding for the door and wringing his hands fretfully. The advantage of setting up his shop in a fashionable district, full of people who wanted to be seen with books rather than actually read them, was supposed to be that this _never_ happened. (Crowley had claimed responsibility for the invention of fashionable districts, back when Aziraphale opened his shop, and Aziraphale had laughed him off, but — well, perhaps there was something to it after all.)

Haniel was close on his heels. “Why do you keep such a… _demanding_ human establishment at all?” she asked, all careful bewilderment, and Aziraphale could practically feel her trying not to let any of the books touch her as she followed.

“Oh,” Aziraphale answered distractedly, “it puts me in a good position to keep abreast of human developments, you know, people coming in here to talk to an unassuming old bookseller, and — and of course it helps me keep tabs on my adversary, the wily demon —”

“Principality Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate!” hollered a familiar voice, in a _very_ jarring form of address.

He stumbled and had a brief heart attack, and came to with one hand steadying himself against a low display in the center of the room and the other pressed to his chest.

He looked up to the mezzanine, and there was —

“ _Crowley!_ ” he gasped, and a thrill of pure _something_ shocked up his spine to see them standing there, perched precariously on the railing with — was that a _sword?_

Haniel had frozen, just as disconcerted, at the loud, sudden sound, but at Crowley’s name she burst again into action, blanching dangerously but moving forward, one hand poised to manifest a Heavenly weapon. “Demon!” she hissed, looking determined to vanquish them but also like she might have forgotten the steps.

“That’s me, all right,” Crowley agreed, with a wide, cocksure grin. The early afternoon light silhouetted them on the height and cast them in a warm glow, and Aziraphale might have said they looked angelic, except that they looked so very _Crowley_ that he felt as though he were drowning in something golden and wonderful.

Aziraphale wasn’t much of a connoisseur of gender, himself, but it looked _marvelous_ on Crowley. From the easy way they held the elegant saber to their voracious grin, their narrow, pleated, excessively fashionable dark trousers and sumptuous red silk bodice with its lace collar and dramatic sleeves, their perfectly disarrayed Grecian curls — only accented by the small, round eyeglasses they had been favoring this decade — oh, Crowley looked every inch the image of temptation and excess, looked _radiant_ with it.

Aziraphale felt a bit dizzy, before he remembered to feel alarmed.

Not six feet away from him was the Leader of the Principalities, looking like she was rapidly overcoming her hesitation at the sight of the Enemy, and Crowley was standing there looking utterly unconcerned over that fact, looking blithe and terribly debonair but also _in danger,_ and Aziraphale was stuck in the middle with no idea what to do.

It turned out he needn’t have worried about that — Crowley seemed intent on taking care of most of the doing, themself.

“You may have thwarted me in the past, Angel Aziraphale,” they crowed, flourishing the sword in a flashy and highly unnecessary fashion, and Aziraphale recognized the little signs that they were on the precipice of laughter, “but now I, the most evil and villainous Demon Crowley, am here to defeat you once and for all!”

So saying, they gave the sword one more dramatic sweep before using it to cut — Aziraphale realized in a flash they were holding onto the rope that held the chandelier in place, a lovely thing of glass and bronze Aziraphale had picked up in 1817 —

— and then Crowley was swinging down and scooping Aziraphale up none-too-gently with an arm around the waist — Aziraphale’s hands flew out to clutch at them for dear life — and then they were going up and the chandelier was coming down, and Aziraphale dropped with an ungainly stumble onto the second floor while Crowley managed to snag their foot on the railing and tumbled headfirst down beside him.

_Goodness._

Crowley scrambled to their feet (with a hissed “oh, _thankssss_ ” when Aziraphale, dazed, ignored the beseeching hand raised to him) and peered back down.

Haniel looked thunderous and only a little cowed, glaring up from the far side of the wreckage of the martyred chandelier. “Demon Crowley,” she growled, “you will pay for this.”

Crowley only grinned at her and — oh! — cinched Aziraphale close again by the waist. The mulberry-red silk of their bodice was as fine and sumptuous as it looked, and shockingly skin-warm. “You’re welcome to have a go, of course, but as only Aziraphale has ever been able to thwart me, I wouldn’t count on much success.”

Oh, good _Lord_.

But Haniel looked as though she _believed_ them, and turned her gaze to Aziraphale with widened eyes. Aziraphale could only smile reassuringly and wave back, and wonder if maybe his overdramatized reports had actually been working.

“You needn’t concern yourself, I’ll take care of this,” Aziraphale told her, playing along, and Crowley hissed disdainfully, to indicate that they were — evil, Aziraphale supposed.

The leader of the Principalities was not to be deterred, though, and Aziraphale’s budding hopes collapsed as she visibly steeled herself, reaching to draw a Heavenly weapon out of the ether —

—and that was when Crowley snapped their fingers and the door to the bookshop burst open under the tidal wave of raucous Londoners that Aziraphale had _thoroughly_ forgotten about, sweeping in in a clamorous rush of mannerly affront and respectable glee at the twisted remains of what had so lately been a beautiful chandelier.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Crowley shouted over the din, and the noise quickly banked as all heads turned to them. Aziraphale’s head was still reeling, and he appreciated the moment of quiet. “We hope you’ve enjoyed the show. If you have any questions, do _kindly_ direct them to our regional director,” and they indicated Haniel with a smug flourish.

Instantly the noise reached new heights, and Haniel seethed up at them impotently as she was immediately surrounded by a crush of imperious customers. No Conspicuous Miracles, Aziraphale remembered in a giddy rush, and he had time for one more reassuring nod to his superior before Crowley whisked him away from the ledge and back into the depths of the upper story.

“Not half bad for a rush job, ey, angel?” Crowley grinned, delight seeping through their indifferent facade.

“I — I suppose it wasn’t, quite,” Aziraphale agreed breathlessly, swept up in a euphoric high at the heady triumph and the daring escape they were making, down the back stairs. Now that the immediate bits (the _uncomfortable_ bits) were over, he was starting to appreciate just how bold and heroic a rescue it had been, how _romantic_ , like something out of those newfangled novels about pirates and suchlike, and, oh, he’d always had a weakness for Crowley’s swash and swagger.

Crowley barked a laugh — a short, pleased thing — and together they tumbled out into the side alley that ran around the back of the bookshop. Aziraphale tugged his coat back into place as they made their way back to the street, and blushed at the easy way Crowley reached over to adjust his cravat.

The crowd was evident even before they rounded the corner and saw the people still nudging each other out of the way, jostling to squeeze in and thoroughly trapping Haniel in the process.

Crowley stopped for a moment to take in the sight, looking terribly, deviously proud of themself.

It really oughtn’t make something go funny in Aziraphale’s chest, but “ought” had distressingly little to do with things concerning Crowley.

"How did you pull it off?" Aziraphale asked, a little too delightedly. He tugged Crowley away and they started off down the busy street, putting as much distance as possible between them and the shop, in case Haniel had somehow managed to free herself.

“Londoners,” Crowley said, in that tone of gleeful awe they got whenever they talked about some innately chaotic facet of humanity. "Nothing more determined than the London middle class bent on looking more socially lofty than they are," they declared, with something worryingly similar to parental pride.

“Well, yes, I _see_ that much, but —” he gestured behind them at the increasingly distant commotion. His head was still a bit muddled from the excitement and the — Crowley’s — the _excitement_. “But how did you manage to amass such an _army_ of them on such short notice?”

Crowley shrugged an unconvincingly modest shrug. “Nothing to it, really. Just planted a rumor or two in the tearooms of London that Lord and Lady Goderich came to your shop to supplement their library. And, of course, anyone who wants to seem sophisticated — which is everybody — _has_ to be seen to have the same taste as the _great and good_ of London,” they concluded smugly.

“Oh,” said Aziraphale, turning over the deceptive, elegant simplicity of it. Then —

"Oh! My books!” He stumbled to a halt and made a frantic start in the direction of the shop. “Oh, I hope none of them damages —"

"Got that covered for you, angel," Crowley cut in smoothly, offering their arm. "Whoever tries to go for a book will find that whichever one they pick is particularly smelly.”

Aziraphale stopped and turned to blink wordlessly at Crowley, who within moments was starting to look impatient and irritable, gaze slithering away from Aziraphale and arm making an _are you coming or what?_ gesture.

Aziraphale hastened to take it, linking their arms together with the little thrill it still gave him and let a visibly flushed Crowley start them off again down the street. “You _protected_ my books,” he marveled, feeling the warm glow in his chest spread until it tingled in his fingertips. He feared his smile was probably rather mawkishly sentimental.

“It was nothing, really,” Crowley grumbled in that tone they never used when they were actually grouchy. “Couldn’t have you moping for the next decade because your bookshop got mussed while I saved you from the most boring meeting this side of the Synod of Augsburg.”

“ _‘Couldn’t’_ — you _shattered_ my chandelier!” Aziraphale remembered, indignant, and tried not to be swayed by Crowley’s fond grin. “That was over a hundred years old, from Marseilles!”

“Yeah, but it’s not like you’ve had it all that time, is it? You only got it five years ago.”

“Seven!”

“Whatever. Besides, a bit tacky, chandeliers, aren’t they?” Crowley wheedled. “Overdone. A skylight’d be much more elegant, wouldn’t it?”

Aziraphale harrumphed and tried not to think about it, for fear he might agree.

“Afraid the opera’s going to have to wait, angel,” Crowley went on, knowing they had him. “We should probably skip town for a day or so, while the —” the smug look returned — “ _interest_ in your bookshop dies down. _Semiramide_ ’ll still be here when we get back. In the meantime, let me tempt you off to Vienna — I hear that Beethoven chap’s got a new symphony out, you like him.”

Aziraphale _did_ like Beethoven. And Vienna. And trips to the Continent with Crowley.

“Oh, fine," he sighed, making a production of it. "I suppose if you're set on going, I'd better come with, being the _only one who's ever managed to thwart you_. Really, Crowley, didn't you think that might be a bit much?"

The blinding grin that had been blooming across Crowley's face turned abruptly to puzzlement.

"What?"

"... what do you _mean_ , 'what'?" Aziraphale fumbled, confused. "I meant, it was a bit over-the-top a claim to make, wasn't it? Even considering how often we mention each other in our reports, it's a little far-fetched."

Now Crowley had stopped altogether, in the middle of the street, and was gaping incredulously at him. “ _Far-fetched?_ ”

“Well — yes?”

“How many demons have you been going around thwarting, then?” Crowley asked, voice laced with pointed sarcasm.

Aziraphale balked, thoroughly puzzled by this point. “Well, I — I suppose I can’t think of any besides you, just at the moment. B-but I’m sure there must have been! And given just how many times you’ve happened to bump into me, back in the old days, it would seem highly unlikely you were never accidentally given the same room at an inn or — or trapped in the same cave with any other angel.”

Aziraphale couldn't quite pin down Crowley’s expression — their eyeglasses certainly didn't help — but it looked almost like that of someone praying furiously for patience.

"...what?" Aziraphale asked.

Crowley just shook their head and started moving again with an aggrieved growl. Their arm remained firmly twined around Aziraphale’s, though, so Aziraphale followed along without much concern. He was getting used to Crowley’s inexplicable moods, which sometimes lasted days or weeks but usually sorted themselves out if Aziraphale left Crowley to do what they would, whether that was disappearing for a while or dragging Aziraphale around London.

Case in point:

"Nothing, angel, nothing,” Crowley grumbled. “Let's get you something nice to nibble on before we hop on over to Austria. Much less pleasant on an empty stomach, in my opinion."

Aziraphale pointedly kept from saying “Does that mean you’re actually going to eat something, this time?” and said instead, “That sounds delightful.”

It _did_ sound delightful, not least because Crowley knew all of his favorite places to eat. The Arrangement had given the two of them more opportunities to see each other, but it had nothing on how things were now that they were both mostly operating within the same city. Now that they were in the middle of an ever-shifting, ever-changing crush of humanity, they could see each other nearly every _day_ if they wanted — and sometimes they did. They could walk arm-in-arm through the streets, protected by the anonymity of the crowd, and talk about frogs and steam engines and how volcanoes probably worked.

Aziraphale knew, now, Crowley’s views on Baroque furniture and on London’s nascent culture (“Pride, Vanity, and Envy all wrapped up in a five-shilling ribbon, angel!”). He knew what kind of wine Crowley liked and which composers they kept up with. Crowley seemed to ferret out every exquisite little unknown restaurant and tucked-away cafe in the city, and brought Aziraphale to each one with transparent casualness. Crowley was even beginning, lately, to come round to the bookshop with a bottle of wine and expect Aziraphale to drink it with them, ending up giggling and lethargic in the warm, dim reclusion of the shop. Aziraphale had miracled up a back room for the purpose, after one evening’s debate over bats had ended with an errant ethereal wing knocking the half-emptied bottle decidedly too close to the Diderot section. Crowley hadn’t said a word the next time she’d come over, just smiled at Aziraphale from behind her glasses as she handed him the bottle and flopped down on the couch (which had still had that new miracle smell) and began a good-humored rant about mountaineering.

It was all becoming so wonderfully, terrifyingly _comfortable._

And yet, when Crowley swooped in (with varying amounts of literalness) to sweep Aziraphale out of danger with a rakish grin, a snap of the fingers, a flippant gibe, so unbearably dear and dashing — it still felt like a bolt of lightning through Aziraphale’s chest, still left him breathless and reeling. Seeing them there, at the bookshop, cavalier and grinning and poised to sweep Aziraphale away in plain sight of Haniel, with brash unconcern — it was electrifying, it was gallant, it was, oh, so _romantic_ , and —

Crowley stumbled over a misaligned cobblestone, and their desperate, flailing grasp for balance jerked Aziraphale out of his thoughts.

“Bloody incompentent civil engineering,” Crowley muttered viciously, giving themself a cursory smoothing-over and threading their arm once more through Aziraphale’s as though nothing had happened. “Not since the sodding Romans has this buggering island seen a decent road.”

“Actually, my dear,” Aziraphale pointed out with some amusement, “I do believe that one is your work. Weren’t you just telling me last month about how your Greater London Pothole Campaign was causing two hundred percent more spilled groceries and unfortunate collisions?”

“243 percent,” Crowley grumbled, unwillingly proud, and their gait lost its persecuted edge.

A moment later they brightened visibly up, their whole body unfurling from its habitual slouch as though buoyed up from within. "Oh, yeah! I ever tell you that thing, the one about about that pet project of mine?"

"Which pet project?" Aziraphale asked. He could remember at least eight of the more recent ones. The 1814 Congress of Vienna came particularly to mind.

"The giant-monster-bones-in-the-ground one."

Aziraphale’s mouth reacted without his permission. "Oh, _good Lord_."

Crowley made a loud sound that sat somewhere between a laugh and an "aha!". Several people turned to stare, and Aziraphale barely mustered the attention to give them a reassuring smile and a chagrined wave. "So you do remember!" Crowley's grin flashed in the sunlight, a distinct note of triumph in their voice.

" _Barely_. We'd both had the better part of two bottles of bordeaux in us when you brought it up."

"Oh, yeah. One of Queen Anne’s hunting parties, wasn't it? Always a good time, those. Anyway! I popped round to the Geological Society the other week — business thing, made their filing system absolutely incomprehensible — turns out they've found another of the things, and they're going out of their _skulls_ —” this they pronounced with unholy relish — “trying to figure it out.”

“Which one?” Aziraphale asked, interested despite himself.

If anything, Crowley’s grin grew impossibly wider. “Guess.”

Aziraphale made a face, trying to remember which ones Crowley had told him about. It had been very good bordeaux. “The… oh, bugger — the — the one with the —” He futilely tried to illustrate by making an odd little gesture with his free hand, fingers extended and held apart. “— sails?”

“Nah, they aren’t gonna come across those for a while. I put those over in a particularly unholy bit of desert over on the American continent — not my most brilliant move, to be honest, might be one of the least weird things to come out of Texas, if the energy over there was anything to go by. No, it was the long one, the one with the unnecessarily long neck and the flippers. Two of them, actually, found right here in _merry old England_ by some woman from Dorset who’s apparently been at this since she was _eleven_. Eleven! That’s — y’know — that’s a _kid!_ ”

Crowley sounded very excited about this, and demonstrated their point by holding out a hand to indicate a child’s height — though, as the hand was slightly below hip level, Aziraphale wasn’t entirely sure Crowley knew what an eleven-year-old looked like, either. He made an enlightened sound anyway, for politeness’ sake. 

This seemed to be enough for Crowley, who was happy to go on. The sunlight tangled in their hair and caught around the edges of their wide smile, and the warmth of their arm around Aziraphale’s settled somewhere deep in his chest.

“‘Course, the Geological Society don’t apparently think that’s impressive enough to warrant letting her join, seeing as she’s got… whatever it is women have. Though they’re happy enough to cart her stuff to London and take turns lecturing about it. ...Think I’ll mosey on down to Dorset sometime and plonk a few more down right in her path.”

“Mm,” said Aziraphale, thoughtful.

“...what?” Crowley peered at him, sounding mildly affronted, and, oh, dear.

"Forgive me, my dear, but it doesn't sound particularly demonic."

Crowley gawped at him. "Are you having me on? This is _proper_ demonic activity! It's the joke of the millennium!"

"Well, yes, it's _devious_ , certainly, but I don't see —"

"Oh, for Hell's — generations of scholars, on completely the wrong tack, devoting lifetimes’ worth of study to trying to figure out how things so ridiculous and impossible could’ve worked! There’s nothing humans like more than ridiculous and impossible, angel, they’ll be fascinated by the things for _centuries_ , coming up with all sorts of outlandish theories — the sheer academic rage will be fueling dissent until the _sun_ goes out!” Crowley concluded, with an exuberant gesture that nearly sent them both sprawling.

Aziraphale gently steered them both clear of the lamppost Crowley was about to walk into, and neglected to point out that Crowley had a weakness for “ridiculous and impossible,” themself.

“Ah,” he said diplomatically. “When you put it that way, it does seem very demonic, indeed.”

“Exactly,” Crowley agreed emphatically. “I might start making the next batch weirder, if this goes on. Ruffs and… frills and unlikely proportions. Someday I might start putting _feathers_ on them, ha!”

Aziraphale tried to picture this and failed miserably. “Even the ones without wings?”

“ _Especially_ the ones without wings.”

Aziraphale hummed dubiously and clamped his mouth primly shut, lest he should give Crowley any more brilliant ideas — Crowley had a good laugh at that — and secretly contented himself to let Crowley promenade him through the broad, sun-lit streets of Soho, chattering happily now about some outlandish new fad the Baroness of something-or-other had started, and to look forward to a lovely few days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Now with[deleted alternate ending!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22189327)**
> 
> -
> 
> I made an important personal discovery when writing this chapter, and it's that while I had thought I didn't care about Regency/early-nineteenth-century fashion all that much, what is REALLY is is that I don't care about the cis version. I don't know if y'all know this, but once you start playing mix-and-match with gender stuff here, it's GREAT. (For anyone interested, my reference pictures for Crowley were basically the bodice of [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ingres_Madame_Marie_Marcotte.jpg) outfit with all the non-torso bits of [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix_-_Louis-Auguste_Schwiter.jpg) one.)
> 
> "Swashbuckler" is a word that most people are on some level familiar with but that never really gets defined. It's more of an aesthetic than a specific set of traits; a feeling of excitement and high adventure, really. Often, they're a young, idealistic, romantic sort of hero with swords and cavalier attitudes -- Zorro, D'artagnan, the Scarlet Pimpernel -- but then you have Han Solo and Jack Sparrow (and probably a bunch of anime characters but I can't think of any right now), who don't exactly fit for some reason or another but are still clearly swashbucklers because of that sense of adventure and freedom and possibility!
> 
> Sorry, I know that's not exactly the type of nerdiness I promised.
> 
> So, in 1814, Sir Walter Scott published Waverley, his first novel, and simultaneously catapulted three things into success/popularity/what have you: historical fiction, the swashbuckler, and his novel-writing career. He went on to write a ton of historical novels with swashbuckling heroes, including Ivanhoe and Kenilworth. (These were known as the Waverley novels, because he published them anonymously for a while and they would be attributed to "the author of Waverley.")
> 
> The genre _exploded,_ spawning The Three Musketeers (and a BUNCH of Dumas' other stuff), Zorro, the Scarlet Pimpernel, a bunch of Robert Louis Stevenson -- pretty much take a swing at any 19th and early 20th century stuff marked "historical fiction" or "high adventure" and you're gonna find 'em.
> 
> Also, as regards dinosaurs: humans have been finding dinosaur fossils since pretty much ever, but the 17th century was really the point where people started looking at them in a scientific way, and about the 18th century we figured out that extinction was a thing that happened, and these were bones of old things that didn't exist anymore.
> 
> Mary Anning was an English paleontologist who was a _professional fossil collector_ since she was _eleven years old._ She made a TON of groundbreaking discoveries, and even though you won't hear about her almost anywhere because she was a woman, she was pretty crucial to the formation of the foundations of modern paleontological science. She discovered the first ichthyosaur, TWO plesiosaurs, a bunch of fishes and stuff, AND the fact that the weird little rock things found in fossilized dinosaur stomachs could be used to figure out what they ate. And, though the scientific establishment of the time wouldn't give her any recognition or reward for her work (she lived most of her life in poverty), they were certainly happy to consult her whenever they got stuck. She was super cool and you should read about her (she went fossil hunting with her dog, tell me that isn't some sort of lesbian fantasy), and I'm very salty about how she was treated.
> 
> **Next up: Hardboiled/Noir fiction and Femmes Fatales!**


	6. 1946 A.D. - Femmes Fatales

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who might have missed it, there's now a deleted "alternate ending" to the swashbuckler chapter [here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22189327)
> 
> The song referenced in this chapter is pretty much Aziraphale's theme song for this one, and anyway it's just a bitchin' song, so if you haven't heard [I've Got You Under My Skin](https://open.spotify.com/track/74jklVKHYTmNMp0baGm6FB) I encourage you to do that! [(youtube link w/lyrics for anyone who doesn't do Spotify)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xQIDMpLyPE)
> 
> This is the chapter that nearly defeated me, and it's 100000% down to [summerofspock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerofspock) and her amazing beta job that we now have anything even remotely resembling a chapter, let alone as fluid and engaging as this turned out! ALL the thanks to her!!!!

Aziraphale picked his way with difficulty through the building rubble that remained in the now-vacant lot, which was decidedly not what he'd prefer to be doing at this time of night. Nearly a year after the end of the war, London was still littered with the debris of bombing. The streets had been cleared and the sandbags put away, but where homes and pubs and shops and theaters once stood there were now gaping voids in the streetscape, and empty ground covered in detritus.

It made Aziraphale ache, to see the buildings and communities he'd watched flourish and settle for lifetimes, lying in ruins. And — it made him think of Crowley, every time. Well, almost everything made him think of Crowley, for the past five years — but the way the remnants of stone and brick and plaster recalled the memory of Crowley’s thumb brushing his, infinitely careful as he passed Aziraphale’s rescued books to him, was almost unbearable.

He'd seen Crowley twice, since that night in the church — once in 1943, a quick invocation of the Arrangement that resulted in a trip to Glasgow, and one earnest but awkward attempt at lunch in 1944, the shadow of 1862 and holy water still looming over them. It was undeniably better than not seeing him for eighty years, but Aziraphale couldn’t help but feel keenly the loss of the easy, casual camaraderie they’d enjoyed a century ago.

The thing was, in the wake of Crowley sauntering into Aziraphale’s moment of despair as though eighty years hadn’t just passed without so much as a word, as though it was the most natural thing in the world, burning his feet on consecrated ground, taking the time, in the middle of a crisis, to save Aziraphale’s most treasured possessions —

The thing was, in the wake of all of that, the realization had come with horrifying clarity that Aziraphale loved him. Not just angelic Love for all creation — which, as Crowley was a demon, wasn’t supposed to extend to him anyway — but something fierce and stubborn and reckless and wounding and all too Earthly. It was something Aziraphale had seen in untold millions of humans throughout the millennia. Aziraphale was _in love_ with Crowley. Proper, full-on, soul-deep, all-consuming, unbridled, selfish, selfless, passionate _love_. And he had been in love for — well, Aziraphale didn't dare muster the courage to figure out how long.

And what’s worse, it was entirely possible that Crowley loved him too.

Crowley had offered him a ride home, that night, and Aziraphale had spent it clutching his bag of books to his chest and trying desperately not to move or breathe or look at Crowley or simply explode into a fine angelic mist. Somehow, sitting with Crowley in his vehicle and watching the London nighttime fly past them, it had felt so _familiar_ — and yet it had only seemed to heighten how utterly unmoored Aziraphale had felt, how alone. He’d been adrift in the awful silence that followed the shattering of everything he had thought he’d known, and Crowley had been _right there_ , and Aziraphale couldn’t say anything because Crowley was back after _eighty years_ and it all felt so tenuous, as though if he’d said or done anything wrong it could all collapse and Crowley might disappear for another eighty years, and Aziraphale couldn’t _bear that_. So he’d sat frozen in his seat, even though he wanted desperately to reach across the divide and offer some sort of bridge, because he didn’t think he could open his mouth without “I love you — isn’t it terrible? — isn’t it _wonderful?_ ” spilling out.

When they pulled up outside the bookshop, Crowley had turned to him with a horribly, painfully, _lovably_ earnest expression, mouth opened to say something, and Aziraphale had said something frantic and automatic and scrambled out of the vehicle. Then Crowley was driving away and every part of Aziraphale was screaming out too late to cry, “wait!”

Aziraphale tried to carry on as usual, but he _ached_ to see Crowley. It didn't change anything, of course, that Aziraphale loved him in a way altogether too human for safety, with every increasingly desperate particle of his being; there was certainly nothing he could do to _act_ on it. They were on _different sides_. The Arrangement was tempting fate enough as it was. But he dearly missed Crowley’s company. He longed for Crowley to barge into his bookshop with a wide grin and an unspoken demand for attention, so that he could stop thinking about how he didn’t know what to do with this new knowledge. He longed for Crowley, disgruntled and complaining, to distract him from how it was strangely wonderful when it should have been terrifying. Oh, he yearned to see Crowley simply for the sake of seeing him; longed for the familiar angles of his face, the shape of his long-practiced scowl, the meticulous indifference of the lines of his body as he casually offered a fond “hello, angel.”

Aziraphale thought he must have always known, somehow, at least a little — with how dazzling he had always found Crowley, how eager he had always been for his attention, it seemed preposterous that he had been entirely unaware. Still, how nice it would be, as the true extent of it all sunk in, to have Crowley near, sprawling dramatically about and going on about something trivial, and grinning at him, the familiarity of their friendship reassuringly solid and unchanged.

That didn’t seem likely to happen, though, given how stilted things had been since 1862.

Strangely, the thought of complying with Crowley’s request for holy water — while still unacceptable — was less viscerally terrifying now that the very fact of Aziraphale’s love for Crowley was enough to get them both killed. It was almost _freeing_.

And that was just too dangerous to examine, so Aziraphale busied himself with his bookshop and his work, venturing out to do blessings and little miracles and protecting humanity in his own way, and ignored the elated, unignorable little fluttering in his chest as best he could.

So here he was, traipsing out in the middle of the night after a vague and overly mysterious telephone call insisting that he meet the caller at the site of a bombed-out dockside gin mill, to negotiate a deal for an unnamed but apparently valuable manuscript. Aziraphale wasn’t at all sure about this cloak-and-dagger nonsense, but he supposed the war had made everyone a little cagey, and he did want distraction.

He managed to make his way precariously to the back of the lot, where some of the rubble had been cleared away, leaving the ground bare and relatively even. This far back, however, the distant rays of light from the streetlamps barely penetrated the gloom, and Aziraphale looked about as he caught his breath, trying to discern whether he was alone or not.

“Mister Marion?” he called cautiously, feeling oddly ill at ease.

For a long moment, he thought that he’d been played for a fool, that the call had been some sort of prank, and that he ought to simply go home.

Then a lighter clicked in the shadows, not fifteen feet from where Aziraphale stood, and a small tongue of flame formed a single point of light in the darkness. 

Aziraphale nearly jumped out of his skin.

“It’s Inspector Marion, actually,” came a voice, gravelly in the way that came from years of heavy smoking, and the flame travelled up to meet the end of a cigarette and then disappeared. “I’d say it was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Fell, but I think you and I had better dispense with pleasantries.”

Aziraphale almost said “nice to meet you,” anyway, in his blank moment of confusion. “I — wh — are you quite sure there hasn’t been some confusion? Only I don’t think I know about anything the police might —”

An aggravated sigh came out of the darkness, followed by the scuffing sound of someone pushing away from the crumbling remains of a wall. Inspector Marion stepped out of the shadowed corner and into the half-light, revealing a lean, haggard-looking man, with a frankly ridiculous amount of scruff, wearing a rumpled suit and a trench coat which was too big for his shoulders. The end of his cigarette flared as he took a drag, and Aziraphale wondered how a human could feel safe enough to smoke when he smelled _that_ strongly of cheap Scotch.

He had keen eyes, and they were watching Aziraphale like a hawk sizing up something it intended to eat.

“I had hoped we could do this without the old ‘you’ve got the wrong guy’ routine, you know,” Marion said, exhaling a particularly noxious cloud of smoke. “I haven’t got all night. So you best start talking, if you know what’s good for you. You’re neck deep in it, but we can get you out if you give Roscow up and tell us what you know.”

Aziraphale was beginning to grow uneasy. There was no manuscript, after all, was there? “I really must tell you I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” he tried to explain.

“Playing the fool won’t do you any good,” Marion said coldly. “We know you’re in with him.”

“That doesn’t seem very likely, seeing as I’m _not_ ‘in with him,’” Aziraphale pointed out, rapidly becoming frustrated and starting to remember that he wasn’t actually overfond of police. “If you’ll just _listen_ to me — I’ve never even _heard_ of this Roscow fellow.”

Marion’s expression darkened and he snorted contemptuously. “Don’t think you can play me for a chump. Everyone in London knows Milton Roscow.” At Aziraphale’s blank look, he went on, in a sarcastic, exaggeratedly patient tone. “Gangster, owner of half London’s nightclubs, head of the biggest smuggling empire Britain’s seen in 120 years? Ringing any bells yet?”

“Oh, dear. Sounds like quite the character.” It was hardly any wonder Aziraphale hadn’t heard of him at all. This was really more Crowley’s forte than his own. Perhaps even one of Crowley’s projects. Aziraphale did hope this Roscow’s work wasn’t particularly violent, though. That was really the point at which he would feel obligated to get involved, and that was never pleasant work.

“He is. And he’s paying you a pretty penny to use your store as a front for his ill-gotten goods. If you weren’t so obviously a dupe, I’d say you’re probably doing his books for him, too.”

Aziraphale stopped his fretting for a moment and pursed his lips. That was simply _rude_. “I’m afraid you have the wrong end of the stick entirely,” he informed Marion frostily.

Marion scoffed contemptuously. “You’ve got a file up at the Records Office, you know that? Not anything that resembles an actual record, service or criminal. But your name pops in and out of Home Office records all through the war. Never anything more than a vague mention, never enough to start piecing together a story.”

Oh, bugger. Aziraphale had _thought_ he’d removed all traces of his work, after the war, from the myriad papers and accounts humans insisted on keeping these days.

… It was entirely possible he’d forgotten to do that.

“Would you like to know what I think has been going on?” Marion asked, in the tone of someone who was going to tell you anyway.

“Well — I really don’t think —” Aziraphale tried, before Marion cut him off — _very_ rudely, in Aziraphale’s opinion.

“I think people had to make deals in wartime, for the sake of the war effort. I think crooks remained on the street, got themselves effective immunity, and everybody kept shtoom because we needed the supplies and Scotland Yard couldn’t spare the manpower. And I also think those arrangements are irrelevant now the war’s over. You understand?”

Oh, _for Heaven’s sake._

“Yes, yes, I understand perfectly, but —” Aziraphale began hurriedly, trying to think of something that would make the Inspector see sense — before a belated moment of realization chimed in his head. “— Now, see here, just a moment — that’s hardly a reason to think I’m — I’m in the employ of criminals!” he rebutted, feeling a distinct note of triumph at his logic and quick reasoning.

It was, after all, a significant leap from a simple matter of an inconsistent wartime record to “embroiled in London’s criminal underworld.”

Inspector Marion, however, hardly seemed to find this as unanswerable a counterpoint as Aziraphale did.

“Maybe not,” he said, sharklike. “But there’s also the matter of your tax forms, isn’t there? According to record, your bookshop — which, I could add, no one seems to remember opening — has sold a grand total of five books in the past three years. That’s not exactly what I would call a ‘thriving business,’ unless you’re handling… _additional_ income.”

Aziraphale was scrambling. He’d worked out a story for this when he’d opened the shop, he was sure he had, only it was… well, he didn’t expect to need to use it! The shop had gotten along _fine_ for more than a century, what with how low he’d kept his head, how thoroughly he’d done his taxes every year, despite Crowley’s repetitive, derisive protestations that there was no point, that nobody did them with any real degree of accuracy. Well, at least they _had_ been repetitive, before… 

Well! Crowley had been wrong, of course, and Aziraphale was about to prove it.

“My dear sir,” he began, drawing on all his diplomacy. “If you _read_ my shop’s tax reports, you’ll see that everything adds up properly. My books are quite rare, you see, and the value —”

“Oh, they add up, all right. All work out into perfect little sums, don’t they? Nobody can work out how it goes, but every time it adds up into neat, tidy little balances.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale interjected, relieved. “Yes, exactly, so there’s really no trouble, you see —”

“Nobody does their taxes that well unless they’re in the mob.” Marion’s voice was blunt.

… Ah.

“And, given the fact that yours is the only shop in Soho Roscow’s extortion goons don’t touch…” Marion trailed off, voice laced with a measure of predatory humor.

“Well — well, you see —” Aziraphale stammered weakly, trying to come up with a better story. The Inspector _had_ , he had to admit, come to the simplest conclusion in putting the pieces together. “Those are all — _technically speaking_ , true, but I’m afraid you have got quite the wrong impression —”

“Look, there’s nothing to be gained from making excuses,” Marion interrupted again, taking a final drag of his cigarette and flicking it away into the mess of ruined brick. “I’m not bent on bringing you in. You’re just small potatoes. What I want is Roscow. Now, you can either help me, and make your life a little easier, or you can keep this up and we can see if you like talking better down at the Yard.”

The Inspector’s patience for talking was obviously drawing to its close, and he still seemed convinced that Aziraphale was a hardened criminal who could be pressured into giving him damning inside information on this man Roscow.

Aziraphale’s hands fluttered nervously at his sides.

He supposed he _could_ make the Inspector forget why he was here, or believe that Aziraphale had nothing to do with anything, or something along those lines. He _could_ , but — it wasn’t _nice_. And Aziraphale did so like being nice, liked the feeling it gave him, liked not having to be terrifying and majestic, a representative of God’s almighty grandeur, “do not be afraid,” _et cetera, et cetera_. 

He _liked_ being soft and silly and using miracles to warm his tea rather than demolishing cities and sending people terrifying visions.

He liked who he could be when Crowley was there to rescue him when he didn’t really need it, when Crowley took care of the not-nice things for Aziraphale of his own accord.

He felt an extra pang in his chest, and he scolded himself for indulging the wishful, selfish thought. Then he took a fortifying breath and squared his shoulders and prepared to do something unpleasant —

— and then, from the darkness to Aziraphale’s left —

“Well, I’m impressed, angel. I had no idea you were such a criminal mastermind.”

Aziraphale hardly noticed how the Inspector jumped and swore; he was too busy spinning, heartbeat stuttering perilously in his chest, to the shadowy corner where the faint sound of shifting rubble sounded the approach of that impossibly familiar voice, to see —

_Crowley._

Crowley, stepping out of the shadows as though shrugging off a coat, a laughing smirk tugging at her mouth. 

Aziraphale couldn't do anything but stare helplessly, shocked and grateful and disbelieving. 

Her usual careless gait was slightly different, had a swaying glide to it, and Aziraphale realized that he hadn’t seen her in heels since the 1790s — thought of the Bastille — felt his throat close up and thought he might cry. She had draped herself in a starry, slinky evening gown more suited to the concert hall or the Ritz than a ruined bar in Limehouse, her hair in sleek pincurls and topped with a small black hat, brim tipped so low over her eyes that it sauntered past “jaunty” and right into “dangerous.” A little silver serpent hung from a necklace chain, resting on the hollow of her chest, and its eyes, marked by glittering yellow paste stones, seemed half as deadly as the arch of her eyebrows, interested and amused.

Aziraphale couldn't breathe.

“Hello, gentlemen,” Crowley said, in a low, lilting tone which seemed almost — sultry.

A shiver shocked down Aziraphale’s spine, and it was all he could do to swallow thickly when Crowley’s gaze fixed tangibly on him from behind her dark, glinting glasses, her expression faltering briefly before it settled back into that familiar smirk. 

Aziraphale felt as though he was seeing the sun for the first time in two years. The weight of her gaze was a physical thing, like a warm pressure on his chest that he hadn’t noticed he’d been desperately missing until he had it again. A slow, giddy warmth bloomed irrepressibly in the center of his chest.

Oh. Oh, dear.

“Organized crime, bit of a step up from legging it out of prison cells, isn’t it?” Crowley asked, something that wasn’t quite laughter in her voice. 

Aziraphale might have replied to the wry, goading remark, but he couldn’t speak. All the emotion, all the joy, all the — all the _love_ he’d thought he’d spent the last five years coming to terms with now rushed back up to overwhelm him. Crowley was here, she was gorgeous, she was — _Crowley_ , and she was grinning at him like — like they were still friends, like Aziraphale could maybe salvage this and maybe, _maybe_ —

“Who are you, miss, and what are you doing here?” Marion snapped, sharp and irritated, and Aziraphale nearly started out of his corporation, having completely forgotten he was there. “This is police business.”

Crowley didn’t respond, at first — didn’t give any indication she was aware of the Inspector’s presence at all — kept looking at Aziraphale, as though waiting for something from him, for a long moment.

“Oh, don’t mind me, Inspector,” she said, eventually.

Aziraphale couldn’t so much as blink, pinned in place by the feeling of her gaze boring into him from behind her dark glasses. He should have felt relieved, not bereft, when she looked away. He shouldn’t have loved her so much that his chest felt ready to crack apart with loss even as she stood before him like the realization of all his impossible dreams. 

But he did, and he didn’t think he could bring himself to stop.

Crowley turned at last to look at the policeman, tilting her head to an odd angle in that beguiling way she had. She always tilted her head like that when she was beguiling people.

She was brilliant and demonic and stunning, and Aziraphale loved her desperately.

“I simply heard a commotion and thought _someone_ might need help,” she continued, an odd emphasis in her wry tone.

Aziraphale couldn’t help staring at the razor-sharp line of her blood-colored lipstick. He’d never taken particular notice of this century’s taste for pronounced makeup, before, but he was beginning to understand why the old-timers who Aziraphale sometimes had to politely expel from his shop called it scandalous. It outlined the shape of Crowley’s mocking smile in bright color, made it impossible to look away from. If Aziraphale hadn’t been feeling numb and fluttery since Crowley had arrived, he would undoubtedly feel it was very scandalous indeed.

Inspector Marion was quiet for a beat longer than he should have been, and when Aziraphale at last managed to tear his eyes away, he found the Inspector visibly sizing up the sudden charge in the air between his interrogatee — his _victim,_ in Aziraphale’s opinion — and this new element. Aziraphale found he didn’t like that one bit. 

“Most young women would find it wise to run away from a disturbance rather than toward it,” Marion observed with wary calculation.

“You could say I have a … _personal interest_ ,” Crowley drawled, turning her gaze back to Aziraphale with a sly smirk that shouldn’t have faded as quickly as it did, shouldn’t have left Crowley looking — almost vulnerable, eyebrows rising in something resembling a plea or a question, though Aziraphale hadn’t the faintest idea what it might have been.

Aziraphale’s heart lurched shockingly in his chest, and a tide of vast and incomprehensible emotion tore through him at the look on Crowley’s face — devastatingly open, bereft of the layers of pride and caution they’d both worn like armor since a slip of paper on a sunny afternoon in St. James’ Park, gazing at Aziraphale with a lost and longing look that they had reflected between them for centuries but that Aziraphale was only now beginning to understand — and suddenly he was so flustered he could hardly breathe, and he was scrambling for something to say almost before he knew what he was doing.

“ _Crowley_ ,” he hissed, or at least he tried to, but it came out far too breathless, “you — you _sly old fiend_ , what — what on _Earth_ are you — do you think you’re playing at?”

It sounded desperately ruffled rather than indignant, and Aziraphale hoped fiercely that the gloom concealed the red heat of his cheeks.

For one long, horrible moment, Aziraphale thought he’d ruined everything — been too transparent, perhaps, or hit too close to the memory of their argument, reminded her somehow of why she no longer sought him out. But then, as he watched, a slow grin spread across Crowley’s face — something truer, this time, without the edge of brittleness — and the tension in her posture loosened and gave way to her familiar swagger.

“Causing trouble, generally. Would’ve thought you’d picked up on that by now,” Crowley grinned, and now the laugh was seeping from the quirk of her lips into her tone, warm and vital — oh, how Aziraphale had missed it!

“Y-yes, well, your work seems to be done for you, in this instance,” Aziraphale stammered, trying to focus, trying not to make a bigger fool of himself. 

And then he had a horrible, sneaking thought. “Unless — unless _you’re_ behind…” He made a vague, fluttering gesture at the whole sordid scene.

Crowley gave him an exasperated look so thoroughly familiar that Aziraphale’s heart forgot how to beat.

“This isn’t my work, angel.”

The look she turned on him then was so significant Aziraphale couldn’t have missed it if air raid sirens had gone off again for the first time in nearly a year.

“Not _yet,_ anyway.”

And, oh. _Oh._ Aziraphale quickly rifled back through Crowley’s earlier remarks, and — she was here to _rescue_ him.

He didn’t know how he’d missed it before.

“Oh.” Aziraphale heard his own voice as if from far away, faint with surprise, and he found his heart was suddenly working double-time. Not only was Crowley here, making instigating comments in the mock-adversarial way they had danced around each other for so many centuries, but she was here to _help,_ like they had in Mesopotamia, like he had in the Bastille, like he had — oh! … like he had five years ago, strolling into a church for Aziraphale as casually as he would into the bookshop. That had happened so _fast,_ though, had been urgent and rushed and over before Aziraphale had fully taken it in. This would be different, wouldn’t it? There was no bomb, no Nazi agent with a gun, no rush.

Crowley was _going to rescue him._

“Oh, yes — yes, of course,” he managed, pushing the words past his dry, sticking throat.

He gazed, overcome, at Crowley — he was staring, he knew, but Crowley was staring right back, her eyebrows raised just a little and the corners of her mouth tilting up into an unconscious, lopsided smile.

If Aziraphale had had the capacity to assess anything, just then, he might have said the moment was surreal.

A bit of music drifted out of some nearby window, a low and sultry tune sung by an American-accented voice. 

_I’d sacrifice anything, come what might, for the sake of having you near — in spite of a warning voice which comes in the night and repeats, repeats in my ear…_

“ _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale breathed, a little rush of air that escaped around the swelling of his heart. He didn’t know what he was going to say, but Crowley was watching him, listening, here and focused on Aziraphale just as he’d longed for, and he _couldn’t_ not say anything.

“You know each other?” Inspector Marion asked, with audibly sharpened interest. 

The moment shattered with such terrific, percussive force that Aziraphale was surprised to find he hadn’t simply discorporated.

Marion had a calculating look to his eyes, darting back and forth between Aziraphale and Crowley, and Aziraphale felt, suddenly, terribly vulnerable.

Crowley’s habitual smirk had returned in full, glorious force. “Oh, we’ve bumped into each other once or twice, haven’t we, angel?” she asked, in a glib tone that made the mistruth utterly transparent.

“Well — I-I’m — I wouldn’t _quite_ say —” Aziraphale stammered with a nervous, halting laugh, trying to gauge the Inspector’s reaction but finding his eyes drifting inevitably back to Crowley.

“Uh-huh,” Marion said, slowly, looking as though he fancied he were onto something. “And, ah, what would your… _impression_ be of Mr. Fell, here?”

Crowley’s grin widened in apparent glee at finding someone to play along. She cocked her head to the side and made a show of regarding Aziraphale, who couldn’t quite stop himself from flushing under her playful stare. “Hmm,” she said, as though considering. “Always seemed a suspicious sort. Too upstanding and buttoned-up not to be hiding something.”

Aziraphale found it within himself to glower at her.

Her smirk only widened.

“But I didn’t know what a ruthless criminal he was — and to think,” she continued, with unholy relish, “if someone had _told_ him about the taxes, the scoundrel might never have been found out.”

Aziraphale froze.

Oh, _fuck_.

He wasn’t going to hear the end of this for the next _three hundred years._

“Now — now wait just a moment,” Aziraphale stammered, doing his best to sound righteously indignant while he tried frantically to think up some way to avoid his fate.

Crowley raised her eyebrows at him in amused question.

… Aziraphale had nothing.

He pursed his lips and glared, and decided that if he had been even a fraction less head-over-heels for Crowley, her victorious smirk would have been unendurable.

The careful, calculating voice of Inspector Marion gave Aziraphale the barest of reprieves. “He’s a crook, all right. And he knows how to keep his mouth shut. But… I think perhaps you can help, miss.”

The Inspector didn’t seem to notice Crowley’s amusement, but Aziraphale could see the thousand unspoken jokes dancing about the corners of Crowley’s wolfish smile, could hear the laughter bubbling just under her voice when she spoke. “Oh? _Do_ tell.”

Marion paused and lit another cigarette, taking a deep drag before responding.

“Our friend Mr. Fell seems to lose some of his _composure_ when you’re here, and I find that… interesting.”

Aziraphale’s heart froze.

Inspector Marion’s general demeanor seemed to indicate he thought he was being very wily.

“I’m not interested in guessing at your relationship, but I think you can help me persuade Mr. Fell into parting with some information on Roscow.”

Crowley looked as though she’d just heard the best joke of her existence. “ _Well,_ ” she drawled, pulling out the word with supreme amusement. “Ordinarily, I wouldn’t _involve_ myself in _police business,_ ” and she put on a tone of false innocence which failed completely to seem innocent rather than predatory, “but in the case of such a _dangerous criminal_ , maybe I should make an exception?”

And, _oh._ It was — that was right, of course. This was only a silly confrontation with a suspicious, misguided human, which Crowley was dragging out for the sake of teasing him. It was as inconsequential as anything could be.

“Oh, _for Heaven’s sake,_ ” Aziraphale sighed snappishly, irritated by the force of his relief.

“How do you propose to keep me safe from this villainous scoundrel after you’re through with him?” she asked in the general direction of Inspector Marion, waggling her eyebrows at Aziraphale. Her obnoxious grin only broadened.

“ _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale said plaintively.

Crowley, seeming to have had her fun, agreed with an exaggeratedly long-suffering sigh. “All right, all right, I’m working on it,” she ceded with a grumble, and turned lazily to the Inspector.

Aziraphale didn’t know what she would do, but he flushed in the warm, giddy knowledge that she was about to — to _rescue_ him, to swoop in and save him as she always had, as though — as though she always _would,_ arguments and awkwardness aside. As though she’d always be there for Aziraphale when he needed her, no matter how silly the concern or how much teasing she felt compelled to do first.

He watched, with a pleasantly dry mouth, as Crowley tilted her head briefly back toward him — with a wink he could _swear_ he could see — before slinking toward Inspector Marion. She was good at slinking, and the Inspector did not seem unaware of this, watching with wary but widening eyes as she slunk over to his side, close enough to put a hand on his forearm and lean in with a conspiratorial tone and a meaningful glance toward Aziraphale.

“ _Don’t you think a brave, cunning Detective Inspector like you should have better things to do than accosting some clueless mug?_ ” she asked, in the unmistakable enticing intonation of a temptation.

Aziraphale couldn’t help an alarmingly delicious shudder. He had seen temptations before, of course; Heaven knew — well, Heaven _didn’t_ know, and he fervently hoped it would stay that way — he had done quite a few himself, over the years of the Arrangement. But he was realizing now, far too late to stop the furious blush gathering in his cheeks, that he had somehow never actually seen _Crowley_ perform one before. And that he’d been completely unprepared for how… how _affecting_ it was.

Oh, Lord.

Marion’s eyes went a little hazy, in the manner Aziraphale had seen hundreds of times, and Aziraphale felt an unexpected stab of empathy for the man — haplessly caught in Crowley’s enthralling, irresistible wiles —

— but then the Inspector blinked, twice, and turned his head to look at Aziraphale, and back to Crowley with a frown. “I’ll thank you to let the police handle its own business,” he said icily.

Crowley froze.

Aziraphale froze.

“...Erm, Crowley,” he ventured.

Crowley made a strangled noise deep in her throat and flapped her hand in Aziraphale’s direction as though shooing something away. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m — It’s just been a while since I actually did one of these, all right?” she hissed sideways at him, and shot him a look that promised dark things if he laughed.

Aziraphale knew from roughly six thousand years of acquaintance that the threat was as empty as they came, but he struggled to keep his mouth pursed around his smile anyway.

Crowley cleared her throat, squared her shoulders, and turned back to Inspector Marion to try again.

“ _I meant that it just seems a bit inefficient, doesn’t it, shaking this clueless sod down for whatever piddling information he might have. Roundabout, isn’t it? What London really needs is an officer with initiative and vision. None of this measure-twice-cut-once twaddle they’re all on about back at the station. Why interrogate chumps in back alleys when you could just mosey on down to Roscow’s house and trounce it for evidence? The rest of the police establishment these days are so by-the-book, he’d never see it coming, probably leaves loads of stuff lying around. And you’d be the rising star back at Scotland Yard, wouldn’t you? You’d be the man who brought in Milton Roscow. Why waste any more time? Why not head over there right now, make it a real surprise._ ”

Aziraphale found himself holding his breath, but Marion didn’t clear his throat and try to arrest Crowley. He didn’t look at Crowley at all. 

Instead he turned to regard Aziraphale for one long, crucial moment — in Aziraphale’s peripheral vision he saw Crowley fall still and waiting — and then gruffly told him, “You’d be more trouble than use. You’re free to go, but don’t try anything smart.”

And then he was turning away, taking one last drag of his cigarette before stomping it out and disappearing with the clack of hard shoes down the narrow warren of alleyways behind the former shop.

And he was gone.

Dazed, Aziraphale turned his gaze back to Crowley, who stared unreadably after Marion for a moment longer before turning slowly to him with a bright grin that seemed a little more honest than she might have intended.

Aziraphale felt faint, and a line of poetry appeared in his head unbidden — _They cried, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci hath thee in thrall!”_

_Keats,_ Aziraphale thought distantly, and held back a whimper. He traced the laughing lines around Crowley’s hidden eyes with his own, as though in fugue.

Crowley’s mouth opened and shut, once, twice, and then she said, “Hey.”

“Hello,” Aziraphale replied, and wondered why he hadn’t noticed the rouge on Crowley's cheeks before.

A moment of silence fell, and Aziraphale realized with a pang of dread that the awkwardness might return, now that the human had gone and taken their reason to playact with him. Perhaps it would still be there — the horrible wall of impenetrable uncertainty, the oppressive fog of don’t-know-what-to-say that had hung in the air between them since 1862. Perhaps Crowley was opening her mouth to say something forced and hollow and _awful_ about how she had things to do, demonic things, see you around, I guess, when both of them knew they wouldn’t. Perhaps this was it. Aziraphale braced for the worst and prepared to commit this last scrap of Crowley’s voice to memory, to press it between the pages of his mind and pretend that it could fill the aching _nothing_ in his chest —

“Did I or did I not tell you nobody does their taxes that pedantically?”

Aziraphale glared at the dashing, beautiful, deeply irritating creature who had somehow become the love of his existence.

“When are you going to let that lie?” he asked, feeling annoyed and relieved at the same time, and rather disoriented by it.

Crowley grinned. “When it stops being funny,” she said, and her tone left little room to doubt that it would be funny for a very long time.

Aziraphale sighed heavily, resigning himself to his fate with an unexpected glow of warmth and allowing himself to look Crowley over in the meantime. Her dress shimmered and shifted with her gait as she began to pick her way toward the alley, and she paused too-casually before the gap in the hastily-constructed fence and turned back toward him, hands fluttering briefly at her sides as though remembering a moment too late that she didn’t have pockets.

Aziraphale loved her.

“Care to come with me for a drink or two?” she asked. “There’s a place over on Bromley Street with a few nice vintages. Bit swanky for me, really, but it seems like something you’d like.”

And, _oh._ Aziraphale’s breath caught in his throat.

That really wasn’t fair.

It would be the undoing of them both, if he followed. If he gave in to her inviting smile. If he let her knuckles brush the back of his hand as they walked, under the flimsy protection of pretending not to notice. If he let himself be happy, even for a night.

He wouldn’t be able to stop himself from falling deeper, if he did. Wouldn’t be able to stop from loving her more. Wouldn’t be able to stop himself from wanting more, and giving more, and one day he would be careless and it would catch up to them, and that would be that. 

For both of them.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t have a choice.

Crowley looked so _lovely_ with that soft, hopeful smile tugging at the corners of her lips. 

Aziraphale followed.

“I suppose a few hours couldn’t hurt,” he remarked in a determinedly light tone, knowing it was a lie. “But that’s all I can spare. I’m quite busy, you know.”

Crowley snorted, and Aziraphale loved her. “Yeah, eternally vigilant in the fight against evil, you. That’s why you were getting a shakedown from Lieutenant Scuff Marks back there.”

“I was doing just fine until _you_ showed up,” he informed her.

Crowley’s grin was blinding, and he wasn’t even looking at it. “Oh, yeah, I’m sure. Positively terrified, he was. I interrupt the bit where you send him home to think about what he’s done, did I?”

“Why _did_ you show up?” Aziraphale asked, stalwartly ignoring the jab. Crowley had intended to get a rise out of him, and it wouldn’t do to leave her _completely_ unthwarted. Besides, he had just thought of this, and would rather like to hear the answer. He peered curiously at Crowley as she led him through the maze of patchily-lit alleys. “How did you know what was happening?”

Crowley looked cagey for the merest fraction of an instant.

“Nothing exciting, really,” she shrugged. “I was doing some skulking for research purposes and heard about this deluded kook of a police detective who was going against orders to squeeze some poor bastard for information he probably didn’t have, and I came to see how much trouble I could stir up.”

“ _Crowley!_ ” Aziraphale admonished, trying not to let his unaccountable amusement show.

Crowley’s posture went defensive, eyebrows rising nearly to her hairline as she turned to look at him. “I didn’t know it was going to be _you_ , did I?”

“I suppose not,” Aziraphale said primly, but his smile must have leaked out somehow, because Crowley’s half-joking guardedness melted away and an unassuming little grin bloomed across her face as she turned away to inspect the junction of the alleyways. She turned confidently down one, and Aziraphale followed as if on a string.

_You’ll be the death of me,_ he didn’t say.

Crowley waited for him to catch back up, and looked as though she’d quite like to knock their shoulders together as they walked, but she kept from any sort of physical contact.

“So,” she said, “what _have_ you been letting into that bookshop of yours? All this ultra-modern nothing-means-anything stuff seems like exactly the type of thing that would have you climbing the walls."

Aziraphale’s breath caught ever-so-slightly at the casual, leading question, and he met Crowley’s teasing grin with a small, heart-rendingly genuine smile and obligingly began to chatter aimlessly about his collection.

He let Crowley lead him out into the night, and pretended not to notice when her knuckles brushed the back of his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now with gorgeous fanart from [Blue_Sparkle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Sparkle) viewable [here!!!!!!](https://asparklethatisblue.tumblr.com/post/190522563833/sharing-a-drink-at-the-bar-based-on-the-femmes)
> 
> -
> 
> Yeah, Marion definitely got fired.
> 
> -
> 
> This. Chapter. Nearly. Ended. Me.
> 
> This single one took about six weeks, two of which were spent trying to cleanse my brain by keeping from reading or writing any fic whatsoever. (Harder than it seems, my friends. Also liable to get you hooked on The Magnus Archives.)
> 
> [Edit: Because I am a genius, I have only just realized that it's been six weeks since I decided to begin posting, which means that I have been working on this doggone chapter for at least THREE MONTHS.]
> 
> Originally, I had got so excited for this and cooked up a ton of Themes and Poignant Parallels for this chapter: Marion was going to represent Heaven, to Aziraphale, watching and scrutinizing his interactions with Crowley, and Marion's intention to use Crowley to get Aziraphale to talk would give Aziraphale a chance to project, HARD, about his greatest fear -- that Heaven (and Hell) would use his and Crowley's love (which Aziraphale had only just discovered consciously and was just now using to put two and two together as regards his ages-old fears and his refusal to give Crowley the holy water) against them, and that it would be their downfall. It was gonna be **TOPICAL,** y'all.
> 
> Unfortunately, with all those Themes, I couldn't find a way to actually get it _written,_ especially while keeping the relatively light, fun tone of the fic. So most of that had to be cut or go subtextual. (I don't regret it, though, even though it was a pain in the ass! Perhaps someday I will do a Serious Fic and this will be good practice!)
> 
> Oh, also Crowley was gonna have a GUN. And emerge from the shadows after having shot something out of Aziraphale's hand. (She probably needs a miracle to pretend like she knows how guns work, let alone aim properly, but still.) Imagine how many people I could have slain with THAT. (Myself included. Ngk.) Of course, then I would have needed something to explain why Marion still thought it was a worthwhile gamble to trust her (did he think she was working in the mob too, and could be bought off? did she make him think she was a famous, reclusive private eye? WAS she a famous, reclusive private eye???) and then we're getting too convoluted again.
> 
> But my favorite element that had to go, definitely, was that Marion was originally going to have a Police Constable sidekick called Stapleton, who was going to highlight the absurdity of Marion wanting to "play noir" by tagging along and being the most affable, English PC imaginable. Marion would have been going "I'm basically Sam Spade" and Stapleton would have been standing there with his flashlight and notebook going "right, I'll just get this jotted down for the paperwork and we can go get some tea and put our feet up, shall we? :)"
> 
> And it hurts me deeply that I had to cut him, for the sake of decluttering the story threads. :'(
> 
> -
> 
> Anyway, femmes fatales!
> 
> Given that my image of a femme fatale was Helga Sinclair from _Atlantis: The Lost Empire,_ I got to feeling a little over my head when starting to research this one -- until I realized that actually _nobody_ knows what a femme fatale is!
> 
> After weeks of study, my conclusion is this: a femme fatale is any woman appearing in a hardboiled or noir novel/movie who both is attractive to the protagonist and has agency and wants of her own.
> 
> The term means "fatal woman," of course, and usually by the end she's caused the death or downfall of the protagonist (and herself), whether purposefully or by just being too darn sexy, but there are exceptions, like Rita Hayworth's eponymous _Gilda_ (1946). Often you'll hear words like "seductive," "scheming," "manipulative," "self-serving," but overall, in my personal opinion, it all comes down to "a woman who Isn't How Women Ought to Be and Yet We Still Find It Sexy."
> 
> Go figure.
> 
> Still iconic though.
> 
> **Next up: Epilogue, with Romcom!**


	7. Post-Apocalypse - RomCom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's here! The last chapter! If I let myself think too long about that I'm gonna be sad, so I won't do that. I think this is the longest thing I've ever written and it's been a TON of fun, you guys and your amazing response and comments and nerdiness and enthusiasm have absolutely blown me away, thank you so much for coming on this ride with me! Enthusiastic expressions of affection of your choice for all you dorks!!

On their first sojourn back to the bookshop after the Apoca-not-so-much (and also after a trip to the Royal Albert Hall), Aziraphale had pulled off his coat while Crowley was pulling a bottle of Sancerre from thin air, turned, grabbed Crowley firmly by the lapels, and hauled him in for a long, thorough, firework-inducing kiss, at some point during which Crowley’s back had ended up against the “Folk Tales which Involve Birds Doing Very Disturbing Things” section. Aziraphale was lost to the world for a good few minutes, absorbed entirely in the indescribably sweet slide of his lips against Crowley’s and the rushing of blood in his ears, and as such it was a little while before he actually noticed that Crowley’s mouth wasn’t moving.

When he pulled away, he had asked, only slightly breathless, “Sorry, too fast?”

Crowley had only stared at him for a moment, frozen and wild-eyed, and then yanked him back in for another kiss.

Suffice it to say that after six thousand years, there was quite a lot of kissing to be done, and that the bookshop had been most definitely closed for the better part of three weeks.

Crowley was still visibly kiss-drunk as he slouched down the street by Aziraphale’s side, and Aziraphale watched, with a quiet joy that was still new but beginning to be comfortable, as Crowley seemed to bask in the warm afternoon sun as they walked. His head lolled just a little atop his shoulders, neither tucked tightly to his chest nor thrust showily in the air, and he turned it occasionally to give Aziraphale a soft, tiny smile that lit up Aziraphale’s chest every time.

London’s streets were bright, jumbled, noisy, and still there, and Aziraphale could stroll aimlessly along them with Crowley, heading no place in particular and enjoying the simple luxury of not having to worry about who saw them. Or about how much time they could spend together without tempting fate. Or about the fact that this morning, Crowley had said, “I’ve loved you since the wall at Eden,” and Aziraphale had replied, “Oh, my heart, I’ve loved you since before I knew I could.” Or about anything, really.

Not to put too fine a point on it, it was very nice and more than a little thrilling.

Technically, they had set out for a new little Moroccan restaurant Aziraphale had heard lovely things of, but somewhere along the way the excursion had become a directionless ramble simply for the sake of enjoyment. Crowley peered occasionally into shop windows with idle interest and made encouraging sounds to keep Aziraphale chattering happily away about whatever silly thought popped into his head. He shot frequent, fond looks at Aziraphale and asked relevant questions now and then, to show that he was listening, though Aziraphale hadn’t doubted that for more than three centuries.

“... one almost wishes those handsome calling cards hadn’t fallen out of fashion. I do love you tremendously, my dear. Oh! Do you know, apart from those charming and rather pointedly included children’s books, I do believe Adam’s given me some new books — well, old books really, quite old and formerly lost to time. I was rearranging the astrology section, it’s been in the most frightful state since you thought you saw that spider while I was un-alphabetizing it, and I wandered into the back room to remove a rather horrible American bookplate from a copy of _Jataka Parijata_ and found eleven plays of Aeschylus and a treatise on medicine by Cleopatra in my case of ancient pieces too delicate for regular handling! I suspect there may be others, too — I found _Things Contrary to History which the Grammarians Explain as Historical_ in another cabinet, and — oh, well, I haven’t explored properly yet, and the astrology section is still in chaos, I’m afraid. I got distracted, sat down with Lucan’s _Iliacon_ as soon as I found it. Oh, it’s just as I remembered it, after two thousand years. Unfortunate boy, poor Lucan, but he had a marvelous talent for turning a phrase, don’t you think?”

“Couldn’t say, angel. I don’t read books,” said Crowley offhandedly, sounding warm and contented.

And because the world hadn’t ended, because he had seen the look of terror on Beelzebub’s face when he had clambered out of a bathtub of holy water, because the sun was out over London and they were walking together in the light of day and he still had the memory of Crowley’s mouth tingling on his lips, because they had been holding hands until Crowley had pulled his mobile phone out to twiddle at it for directions to the restaurant — 

Because he _could_ , Aziraphale remarked wryly as he skirted a bicycle rack, “I have a Prose Lancelot and two volumes of Robin Hood stories that say otherwise.”

Crowley made a loud choking noise and managed to trip _backward_ , as though someone had quite literally pulled a rug out from under him.

Aziraphale looked over in surprise and not a little concern, as Crowley seemed to have smacked his elbow against a lamppost as he flailed to right himself, but Crowley didn’t seem to have noticed. Instead he was stumbling down the sidewalk alongside Aziraphale and paying absolutely no attention to where he was going, gaping at Aziraphale with his familiar expression of shock so deep it almost bordered on panic.

“You — sorry — _what?_ ”

His voice had gone high and funny.

“ _You knew?!_ ”

Aziraphale looked at this dear, ridiculous creature, with whom he had played a minor role in the saving of the world and a major role in rearranging the universe to carve out a place to be together in, and smiled against the laughter bubbling light and heady in his chest.

“Of _course_ I knew, my dear,” he chided, gentle amusement lacing his tone. “You were terribly dashing, dearheart, but never very subtle.”

“Hgkn,” said Crowley. Aziraphale could see glimpses of his eyes behind his glasses, and they had gone glazed and distant, as though he were having trouble remaining in his corporation.

Aziraphale, being just a bit of a bastard, added, “It was very sweet when you popped in to rescue me from Haniel a la _Quentin Durward_. Very Romantic, in both senses of the word.”

Crowley made a strangled whimpering sound.

Aziraphale took pity and quieted, watching with amusement as Crowley tried to process. He looked as though he would be hyperventilating, if he were human, and was thinking about doing so anyway.

They walked in silence for a few minutes, and Aziraphale enjoyed the clamorous sounds of London still existing around them.

“So,” Crowley asked, shaky, and Aziraphale smiled at him, “you — you knew, all along, that I — that it was — and you — ?”

“That it was romantic?” Aziraphale asked brightly, and Crowley made a choking noise that Aziraphale took to be affirmation. “No, I’m afraid. It did take me a frightfully long while to pick things up, though of course I loved you from the start, or nearly. I knew they were — well, romantic things to do, certainly, but I never quite pieced things together at the time. Of course, that didn’t stop me from fantasizing rather desperately about them,” he added, as an afterthought.

Aziraphale stopped at the crosswalk and turned an adoring smile to Crowley.

Crowley made the sort of noise that one might expect to hear from a drowning man, and walked straight into traffic.

Ordinarily, when Crowley walked into traffic, he had some sort of plan, and that plan was usually to make himself a nuisance to drivers who were already stopped up due to London’s continual congestion. Less often, Crowley was simply unwilling to bother with waiting for the signal to turn, so he miracled a signal red somewhere and counted it as another bit of demonic work. So Aziraphale was ready, for a moment, to simply step out after him.

But the unnaturally shiny luxury offroader which looked quite capable of squishing Crowley’s corporation flat was still barrelling up to the intersection with no sign of slowing.

“ _Crowley!_ ” Aziraphale gasped, but he was already moving, darting out to yank Crowley back by the elbow as he turned, eyebrows raised vaguely in question, back toward Aziraphale.

And then the hulk of a vehicle was rushing past them, and Crowley was blinking up at Aziraphale from the circle of his arms, glasses askew and expression slack with dazed shock. His hands had clutched instinctively at the shoulders of Aziraphale’s coat, though Aziraphale wasn’t planning on dropping him anytime soon.

Crowley’s eyes, unveiled by the slippage of his glasses, were wide and golden, the lovely tourmaline color slipping past the confines of the irises. Aziraphale had loved him dearly for far too long to count.

Crowley had _walked out into the street_ because Aziraphale had been aware of Crowley casting himself as the romantic hero to rescue him.

“You —” Crowley managed, high and breathless. “I was —”

“My dear,” said Aziraphale, not without affection, “I’m flattered that I can reduce you to insensibility, but I would greatly prefer that you don’t get yourself discorporated. We’ve only just started with the kissing, and I’d rather not have to stop while we find you another body. Though I must say,” he added, enjoying the way Crowley gaped at him, “if this is how rescuing me felt, all those times, I’m beginning to understand the lengths to which you went.”

Crowley gawked for a moment more, frozen stiff in Aziraphale’s arms.

And in an instant his hands were clamped around Aziraphale’s cheeks instead of his shoulders and Crowley was dragging him down into a wild kiss, trusting his weight more completely to Aziraphale’s strength.

Aziraphale happily dipped him further, and even more happily did his share of the kissing.

Deafening cheers rose up all around, from the pedestrian crowd Aziraphale had completely forgotten, and Aziraphale blushed and would have beamed, had his mouth not been _quite_ so well-occupied.

Crowley eventually tilted away, and Aziraphale obligingly leaned back, tipping Crowley up not quite to the point of standing on his own feet. He was finding he rather liked having Crowley draped in his arms, and from the look on Crowley’s face, so did he.

Crowley was beet red and panting, and fixing Aziraphale with a look of accusation.

“You’re an absolute monster,” he accused, and a dazed grin snuck into the corners of his lips.

“Mm,” Aziraphale agreed, feeling a bit overwhelmed himself, and returned, “and you’re a rather magnificent hero.”

“Shut up,” Crowley said, struggling fruitlessly to force his wide smile back down.

It was a lovely smile, and the world hadn’t ended, and centuries of quiet longing and grand romantic gestures couldn’t compare to the simple joy of having breakfast together or kissing the wits out of Crowley on a busy London sidewalk. Aziraphale kissed him again. 

And, wonderfully, the world went on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Nerd Notes**
> 
> I'll be honest, I don't know shit about romcoms, but I know people get rescued from traffic and people start cheering for seeing random strangers kiss in public places, so here we are. XD
> 
> And, being me, I snuck in a few references to some nerdy things:
> 
>  _Quentin Durward_ is one of the Waverley novels, set in late medieval France. It's about a royal bodyguard and his forbidden love with a countess, whom he must rescue from both forced marriages and mortal danger. :D
> 
> (It's also apparently about political intrigue or something? Idk, I just focused on the important stuff.)
> 
> The Greek playwright Aeschylus is known to have written over ninety plays, of which only six survive, and none of Cleopatra's books about medicine, magic, or cosmetics survive. _Things Contrary to History which the Grammarians Explain as Historical_ is a lost work by the Roman philosophical critic Longinus, and it has one of the best damn titles I have ever seen.
> 
> And, finally, Lucan was a Roman poet who lived at the same time as Nero, who was only a few years older. As young men they became close, and Nero showered him with gifts and signs of favor..... _until_ they had a falling out. We don't really know why, but Lucan published some poems that seem to have been criticizing Nero, and some scholars think this was the source of the feud, while others think (more entertainingly, in my opinion) that Nero just kind of lost interest and Lucan wrote the poems as payback. Regardless, Lucan got involved in a failed conspiracy to assassinate Nero, and when it was uncovered, he was forced to commit suicide. In a final extremely dramatic and kinda gay note, one of his poems had included a scene of a wounded soldier dying in the same way, so he recited it aloud while he was bleeding out.
> 
> Which is the bitchingest type of last words, I'll be honest, and also leads me to think he and Nero were really similar types of people, no wonder they hit it off.
> 
> \--
> 
> Again, thanks so much for reading!! Every single one of your lovely comments have made me so happy, I can't tell you, and I'm definitely excited to write more self-indulgently nerdy content for this fantastic fandom. ❤️❤️


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